


Deathless

by mothermonsters



Category: True Blood
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Original Character(s), POV Alternating, Pre-Series, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:16:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4559118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothermonsters/pseuds/mothermonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most dangerous vampires in the world struggle against each other for power despite the supernatural ties that bond them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Castamere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death and the raven man strike a deal against royalty.

A girl of twenty watched as her husband choked on his own blood. The red ribbons flowed thickly from his open throat and mouth while his eyes stared terrified. This was how she found him on their bed, and this was where he would die.

“ _No. Please, no. Max..._ ” Her sobs punctuated the terrible noises her prince made, as if to compete for the most horrific. The girl’s hand instinctively went to her swollen belly as the son within kicked and agonized as well. _He will not have a father_. The thought made her sob even harder. 

Her front was soaked in the blood of the man she had wed only two short years ago. The marriage had been out of love as much as for political gain. They lived in a castle of stone and ice, at least that was what Max had told her it was made out of; the winter months were so terrible that Max had often joked that they were a pair of penguins who lived in a palace of ice and snow. Max had liked to joke, and he had liked to make his wife smile.

When the discovery came that they would be having a child, the Prince of Castamere threw a party to honor his princess. Aurelia had been seated on a throne of gold, her pale hair adorned with a crown of flowers and lace, and her newly pregnant form wearing a gown of purple silk. Max had gathered musicians and acrobats and enough food to feed an army while everyone Aurelia had ever known kissed her and wished her endless good fortune. _It is a boy_ , that was what the psychic had told her when she had rested her hand palm down on Aurelia’s still-flat stomach. _You will have a son with the same vigor for life as your honored husband._

And they would be happy. That was what Aurelia had promised herself from that day on; now several months later. But everything was dark now, and her honored husband lay so close to death in front of her. She clasped his hand slick with blood and held it fast to her own cheek. He was barely breathing now and so terribly pale, but Aurelia swore she felt his hand squeeze her own. And then he was gone.

His lovely dark eyes stared lifelessly as Aurelia buried her face in the crook of his arm, not daring to care about the blood that would surely stain her. _Let it_ , she thought, _let them see the blood that has been shed this night. Let them see me wearing what I have lost to their dark ambitions._ For the world outside was raging, and it didn't seem like the invaders had plans on stopping soon.

Screams and flames and the smell of death rose from the night air and in through the window of the bedroom, but still the princess did not move. There she lay beside the body of her lost love, listening to the sounds of war while stroking her pregnant belly. A tune rose up from her, one that her own mother used to sing in those frightening times of Aurelia’s childhood. She hummed to her son a song that was meant to be comforting but only sounded lonely here; and more of her people died outside of her walls. 

Time passed in a vortex. It was never quiet these long night hours while nameless invaders slaughtered the islanders into extinction. They had never even seen those ships approaching; they hadn’t noticed anything wrong at all until it was too late. Sounds from inside the castle walls roused her from her waking nightmare. Shouts and orders and the voices of men. Only one of two things could happen to her next: they would discover her, rape her, and likely kill her; or they would discover her, rape her, and take her prisoner. Only to kill her later. She could not let her son---- Max’s son----- be born into a life of imprisonment. With grimness in her heart she faced her husband and closed his eyes, knowing that she would never see the way they looked at her again. Next she leaned close and pressed her lips to his for the last time. The coldness of them would linger for a lifetime. 

The sword she had found on the scene had belonged to Max, and it had been used to kill him in cold blood while Aurelia had hidden in the toilet on his own command. She lifted it now and saw her raw eyes reflected in the steel. It was heavy but not impossible; nothing was impossible when it came to surviving. 

They were coming. The footfalls grew closer but they were strangely hushed. Whoever opened that door would find quite the sight; and they did:

A very pregnant young woman stood guard with a sword much too large in hand. Her hair and face were stained with blood, and the front of her dress was soaked through sticking to the protrusion below her heavy breasts. Hooded figures, three of them, encircled her and she screamed the way she had heard fighters do. With one heavy swing of steel, Aurelia put her weight into a slash for the center figure, and with one easy movement the stranger caught the blade with a bare hand that stopped it in its tracks. 

Aurelia let go, and so did the other. Its hand had been cut to the bone and dark blood flowed freely. The other cloaks stood as though they were only shadows. And impossibly so, but before the girl’s own eyes, the deep wound that should have left a nasty scar healed to perfection. Her eyes flashed petrified while the mouth in the hood grinned. There was a blur. Then there was nothing.

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“They fought but in the end, sadly they all died.” The raven man liked these silly proclamations; these words like a eulogy he hadn't been asked to give. It was a part of a game he amused himself with in his impossibly old age; or perhaps he had always been doing this. Enormous fires threatened to engulf the entire castle in one whole gulp but they would burn for many hours, well into the gray of morning. No one would be able to tell what happened here; it would be a tragedy but an inexplicable one. That was exactly what they needed.

The two males watched the flames eat at the evidence, the corpses, and their lost livelihoods. The stench was unbearable but it was what the undead had grown accustomed to; an existence filled with sweet and pleasant things was unattainable and undesirable for them.

The younger of the two began to think that he would need to rid himself of this cloak as soon as possible. It still bore the blood and smoke of a night’s worth of war, and this burning rot was not making it any better. Ash filled wind ruffled his unkempt hair and stung his pale eyes but the boy watched on; he would not move until his elder did.

The thing about that was, Korun was particularly fond of watching destruction; almost as much as he enjoyed participating in it. The ancient man lay somewhere between entirely pragmatic and absolutely insane. There was really no telling which side of the coin you were bound to get when you involved yourself with a man who fashioned himself ‘Russell Edgington’. 

He claimed the name made him sound more human, more modern; that it did but it was no true fit for a creature with a loyal following of ravens. The birds were always flocking to him, sitting atop his hunched shoulders and crying for attention. Legend surrounded this phenomenon in the form of rumors that Korun was a raven himself in a past life, or that these birds were the souls of those he had slain. If the latter was the case, there would be many more ravens flying about the head of the Druid. It was undoubtedly apparent that the man and these birds shared a striking resemblance: Korun had hair as dark as midnight although it was sparse in places, his eyes were equally as dark and beady, while his face was rather bird-like with a nose that looked like a beak in some shadows; even his voice had a shrillness to it when possessed with anger. Whatever the reason, these birds seemed to go wherever Russell Edgington went and by now he had come to see them as pets.

One large black male whom Korun seemed to favor landed on the man’s shoulder now, and he produced a piece of corn for it. “Only one was recovered.” He spoke to his younger companion. “The one I told you about. There was a bit of an----- inconvenience but that has been taken care of.” The ancient boy looked at him wordlessly with eyes despairing. Korun began again. “Do not change your mind now. Even if you could, what’s done is done and we made a deal. My words aren't useless, Godric>> he spoke in the old tongue.

The boy called Godric drew his hood up over his head to signal that he wanted to leave. He watched as Korun smiled proudly at the mess he had made before granting them the opportunity to leave. They left the island burning and raven-ridden. A calling card of Death.

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The nest was already full upon their return. The youngest vampires offered up their wrists to the incoming ancients but Godric brushed them off. He was not hungry and hadn't been in many moons; at least not for the blood of his own kind. There were rituals in this group that bothered the boy and he no longer hid his distaste for them. Feeding on the youngest and using them like sex slaves, luring too many humans into the lair, burning everything---- for fuck’s sake why did they burn everything? But he sat cross-legged beside his only progeny and watched the blond creature slurp blood from a chalice. Was that meant to make them feel civilized? Russell was the leader here, and what he said and desired happened, and if he had a fancy for expensive human belongings then they were procured. The entire nest was stuffed with these trappings, the things that denoted a human’s wealth; as Russell was known to target the wealthy almost exclusively. Godric was the only vampire who could question Russell; challenge him. But when the subject of the necessity of this finery was brought up, Russell shut Godric down by pointing out that the boy had made a Viking prince for a progeny. So in that way and many others, the younger one simply allowed his elder to do as he pleased. 

It was not all unfortunate for Godric as it was; he was keeper of a large land not far, and only occasional dealings with Russell made his rule interrupted. The latest deal was precisely the reason for this visit.

Korun had already settled his form in the throne he had crafted from bones and feathers and what looked like vampire fangs. They were, but no one was allowed to ask why. Others gathered around at the silent command of their nest leader to hear the latest news. Everyone in attendance was keen to learn what had become of the once prosperous Castamerian island; now that the army of undead had paid a visit. Korun lifted his arms theatrically (nearly everything the man did was in the name of drama) and announced the fall of the ‘last stronghold to discover them’. 

The thing was, any human discrepancies in their territory were considered a threat by law and land of the undead. Unfortunately for a small group of knights from the island, they had stumbled upon the nest and lived to tell the tale. That meant any and all of their homes and neighborhoods could be infected with the slander of men and women who drank blood and coupled openly beneath the night sky. Plus, Korun was nearly always looking for another empire to topple. 

Now he turned his and everyone else’s attention to Godric who sat with eyes darkened by the shadows. “I have secured a most precious alliance; positively unheard of in the history of our kind.” There was no way to prove the accuracy of that statement. “One has made it into our ranks by my own hands.” The entire nest exchanged glances of curiosity and confusion. Perhaps they were wondering why their leader had his gaze fixed solely on his second-in-command. “A deal has been struck between myself and our Lord of the Forest.” Korun extended his hand towards Godric, whom he liked to give such a nickname to; even if it felt like a mockery of the land the boy governed. “Many of you know the opposing forces we have from the South; the seat of our enemies will not sit still until they have secured the land we all know belongs to Godric. They have a claim to it, but we now have a stronger one.” Korun allowed the suspense to thicken in the air, piling on the dramatics. His dark eyes held on to Godric’s as he knew the reveal would be so sweet. “The Lord of the Forest will take on a Lady; a wife of mine own blood to secure his claim.” 

The energy in the space shifted towards Godric as most waited for him to react while others, his own progeny included, granted the ancient his needed reprieve from the hailstorm of probing eyes. Now Korun laughed to see his near-equal squirm beneath this scrutiny. He thought it would shame the younger vampire to make him go through this ordeal: either obey the offer given or live in the nest under constant control. Godric would take his freedom any given chance after what he had gone through as a much younger vampire; he would not live under Russell’s thumb. 

Whatever it cost him, Godric would always live a life that was his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KORUN is the original name of Russell Edgington according to the established Wiki page.  
> Castamere is the name of Aurelia's home.


	2. Korun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Russell announces his plan. Aurelia enters a new life.

The bath was warm, and yet its occupant still shivered. She had been sitting in this deep tub for close to an hour but still felt filthy. A kind woman who had been attending to her lifted the girl’s hand from the water and began to scrub under the nails with a brush. Neither woman spoke much at all to each other for each knew the circumstances here were sorrowful. The maid exchanged one hand for the other while the girl remained limp. Aurelia could not touch her own body, nor could she hardly stand to look at it at all. Here in the bath she kept her eyes unfocused and her shoulders hunched while the unnamed woman did everything for her. 

Apparently she had been here for close to a week; some sort of prisoner from what she could gather. Apparently she had slept for three straight days and nights, and upon her waking was told that she had been found terribly close to death. Only the girl quickly discovered that she already was dead.

Of only two things she was certain of: her home was lost to her, and so was her unborn baby. She hadn't needed to check the status of her stomach; she felt her son’s absence from the very moment she rose from her coma-like slumber. Oh how she had desperately wanted to cry and scream and beg the Gods, but it seemed as though Aurelia Marius had no more tears left to cry; or perhaps it was because she was dead now that she cried no longer. Her body simultaneous felt the strongest and weakest it had ever felt; the one time she dared face her reflection she saw that her skin and hair had more vitality as well. To her it mattered no longer how she looked on the outside if her insides were a tumultuous storm of agony. 

The female attendant took hold of Aurelia’s arm now. “Up now, girl. You've been in there for too long.” Her voice was accented in a way Aurelia did not recognize but it was kind all the same. The young woman rose from the old porcelain tub without modesty while the caretaker wrapped her body in a long cloth. Then she led the former princess to a chair where she seated her and brushed through the tangles in her long, colorless hair. Aurelia sat silently, allowing herself to be poked and prodded like a life-size doll as her hair was braided into a mockery of a crown. Then she lifted her arms as instructed while the maid dressed her in a gown of embroidered green silk. It was lovely, and Aurelia would have said she thought so if she hadn't felt so numb. 

Her servant stepped back to admire her work and balled her fists on her hips. “Smile, girl. Everything could be much worse for you.” 

A sharp rapping on the closed door roused the woman away from her gentle scolding and she went to attend to that instead. Aurelia heard the door open and the female speak in a language she did not understand. Suddenly she reappeared with another person in tow. The look she gave Aurelia was much more firm now. “Stand and show yourself to Lord Korun now, child.” And she stepped aside to show the man who had been standing behind her.

Aurelia rose from her chair as if pulled by an invisible line; the feeling was strong and deep in the center of her abdomen. Like a magnet her eyes were drawn to the stranger’s and she saw how black they were. This man called Korun was as black of hair as he was of gaze; his face was pointed and unkind, and his fingers were filled with gaudy rings of different shapes and sizes. Perhaps the most striking thing about him was the large black bird that rested on his thin shoulder and peered at Aurelia with greedy little eyes. Korun wore an expression somewhat like pride as he smirked at the girl in front of him. “Much better now than the first time I saw you; covered in blood and carrying an extra twenty pounds around your middle.” Aurelia froze as bile rose in her throat, but before a reaction could happen the raven keeper produced something from the pocket of his velvety black cloak and grabbed Aurelia’s hand. She gasped from the force as the man slid a wooden ring on her index finger. They both turned their eyes down to study it and Aurelia saw it was delicately painted in colors of plum and gold feathers; it would have been a kind gesture had she understood it.

Korun held on to Aurelia’s hand despite her deep desire to be free of his grasp. There was something too intimate between them and it scared her. “My first gift of the night to my new blood.” The way he looked at her seemed almost fatherly, but his eyes were much too cold to be believable. Still, Aurelia hadn’t a single clue as to what was going on, who this man was, or what he meant by ‘new blood’; any talk of blood made her want to break out in a cold sweat. Now he led her by the same confined hand to the tall mirror she had been avoiding all night. He faced her towards it and stood behind her; he was short, barely much taller than she. Now Aurelia looked at the sad woman in front of her; her entire reflection. While her hair and dress were as lovely as ever, the pale face was quite ghastly: lips swollen and eyes tinged red with dark circles beneath them. She had always been called a beautiful girl, but this one she looked upon hardly fit that part; she looked quite dead.

“That gown is my second gift to you this night,” Korun continued as his reflected self pointed at the dark green masterpiece. It was expertly embroidered with a pattern of pale pink flowers and rich violet leaves. At the sleeves’ hems were real raven’s feathers, and the bodice was styled with golden thread that dipped into a cleavage much lower than she was accustomed to. Korun was leaning in so close that his head was practically resting on Aurelia’s shoulder. “This is a very special night for you and I both,” he told her ear. “I’ve given you new life and now you will give me something very important in return.” Immediately the girl felt a large lump rise in her throat as she choked back fearful tears. What did he want with her, and what was he planning on doing to her? 

Suddenly everything was making sense: the bath, the gifts, the way he looked at her. She was a prisoner of war and he was her captor. All of this pleasantry was just a sick game; a way for him to feel better about violating her. Aurelia squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to block out her disturbing thoughts. She felt like crying again but knew that no tears would come; and perhaps tears would only make this man angry and violent. “Please.” Her voice shuddered. “Please just kill me.” Because she had silently been asking for death for days now, and it was time for her to be with her husband and son again.

Her blue eyes opened to see Korun’s face floating before them; he almost looked sympathetic. “Oh, Aurelia don't you understand?” He had her by the shoulders, his rings digging into her skin and bones. “I already have killed you.”

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The meeting hall was thick with incense; the ethereal scent of sandalwood floating above the heads of a dozen or so vampires. For the most part the nest had been cleared for tonight’s procession save for those Korun deemed necessary to act as witness. Among them was Eric Northman, who had been watching his maker pace the length of the room like an animal trapped in a cage; in some literal way he was. 

The tall Viking sat with one long leg crossed over the other, his silky golden hair tied back with a leather thong. When he spoke to Godric he hoped his words would be taken as inoffensively as possible: “You allowed Korun to talk you into an arranged marriage? His control over you has gone on for too long.” But Godric turned on his progeny and granted him a look of severe warning; this was not the setting to be speaking ill of Korun. 

He could tell that Eric had more on his mind; likely more words of slander but Godric would not entertain them at this time. What’s done is done. He looked at his childe as though to convey his thoughts: _I made a deal; one bound in blood. You know the blood never lies, Eric. I cannot turn back now; not on Korun_. Because the consequences of betraying a vampire as old and powerful as he were surely fatal, and Godric was not through existing yet. 

It was only marriage. He had never before participated in, let alone fancied such a thing but the landscape of the undead had become impossibly political. Power struggles were everything, and Godric was much too old to get away with not participating. Besides, he enjoyed his seat in the realm and did not want to see it taken from him by another. He was a good ruler and his people respected him; even loved him.

And this girl would understand the nature of this union surely; she had been a royal in her past life, and had experience with power. That was exactly why Russell had made a preference of her. He had also claimed that she was young and fair to look upon, but vampires were hardly ever monogamous and neither could expect that of one another. This woman may be a newborn but she would learn quickly at the side of Godric of Gaul.

Now Eric was flipping a small dagger in his hand, catching it blade over hilt as his face was fixed in silent contemplation. He turned that thinking over to his maker: _What if she is the one to break it off, does that count? What if she cannot bear your strange habits or your keenness for long periods of solitude and begs Korun to find another purpose for her?_ Godric fixed a dangerous look for Eric: _so you’re saying that I am so unbearable that a girl of mere twenty will break a blood oath just to get away from me?_ Then he put on a chagrined smile. They may never find happiness with each other but the Lord of the Forest was willing to grant his future wife a home, food, and freedom; that was much more than he had had coming into this undead world.

 _If you’re lucky she will have a similar taste for unreadable scripts and an off-putting collection of artifacts of war_. Eric’s teasing thoughts entered Godric’s mind again. The boy was a bit strange, even for vampire standards; which in this case meant that he had a strong desire to learn and study from any source he could; most of his undead counterparts were not as selfless. 

Whatever else Eric had to say to taunt his maker would have to wait now, for the entrance to the hall was now filled with the dark forms of Korun and his favorite raven. The nest master wore a smug smile that told everyone in the room that he knew the secret they were all waiting to hear. Godric stopped his pacing and froze with a grim expression on his youthful face. As Korun stepped towards him, everyone else in the space stepped back like a sort of dance; they were merely spectators, and they wanted to get the best view. 

Korun and Godric studied each other for any signs of what the other may be thinking, but this was a duel that would have easily lasted an eternity if the raven hadn't screeched its impatience. Korun clucked his tongue at the intelligent animal perched on his shoulder and told it, “you are so concerned for our friend Godric. That is sweet of you.” The bird hopped as if it understood its master before turning its beady eyes on Godric, who sneered at it. Korun’s ravens did not like the boy for whatever reason; they seemed to know exactly who their owner’s true fans were. 

“I know who in this room is even more concerned for Godric though,” Korun sang. “But he shouldn’t be. Your bride-to-be is lovely. I made sure of it.” And Godric could trust that Korun had. If the elder had anything to account for, it was his eye for beauty. It seemed that he made up for his own ugly soul by surrounding himself with exquisiteness. 

When he turned back to the entryway a female maid appeared with a young thing in a well-fitting gown. The two women approached, the younger seemingly being pushed along by the servant as she tried not to look at anything that wasn’t her own two feet. 

The girl was deposited at Korun’s side. Now Godric could see her for the first time; this woman who was meant to become his bride. The daughter of the raven man. Korun knew that Godric was looking, perhaps waiting, and he placed a hand under the girl’s chin to force her face upward but still her eyes remained low. He laughed at the challenge this presented and leaned into his progeny’s ear to warn her, “do not be disobedient now, I'm telling you. I still have one last thing to gift you with.” And he yanked on the back of her hair until she had no choice but to look at Godric.

Perhaps what was most impressive was the way she remained a statue under the undoubtedly strong hold of Russell Edgington, but Godric was expected to appraise her and tell Korun that he approved. It was another game that the raven lord enjoyed playing; objectifying humans and new vampires for sport, and almost always his targets were women. It was well-known in this circle that Korun did not see women equal to men, and even more well-known that he prefered the sexual company of men exclusively.

With hands concealed behind his back, Godric approached the woman in his host’s grasp and looked into her eyes. They were quite nearly the same color as his but countless years younger. Her hair was strikingly pale like the moon, and her body was very feminine in shape; healthy as the way a royal human’s would be. On all counts she could be considered very attractive, and Godric could see how Korun would suspect her a good pick. “Do you have a name?” He asked her. Nothing. The young woman stared down her nose in the only way she could with her head forced back but she did not speak. Now Godric turned his face to Korun. “Her name is Aurelia Marius, but you can call her whatever the hell you like.” He was obviously annoyed with his progeny’s disobedient behavior, as he had been hoping she would cooperate without his command. “Then I’ll call her Aurelia.” Godric tried a small smile for Aurelia. “And please Korun, release your hand on her if you could. It’s not as if she has anywhere to go.” He thought that would appease his elder, which it did as his hand fell away from the girl’s hair ruining the careful style in the process. 

Aurelia no longer stared at her feet, but instead chose to look at the boy in front of her. “You're young,” she stated. To which Godric replied, “not nearly as young as you.” That seemed to either satisfy or baffle the girl as she discontinued any possible further conversation. Now Korun addressed the room: “it is nigh time to make this engagement official.”

Quickly enough the pair were dominating the center of the room, both facing Korun. He was looking smug again as he surveyed the chaos he had created; sending two existences into an eternal struggle. Damnation at the hands of the other. It was no doubt that these two could and would hurt each other and Korun was near giddy at the mere prospect of that.

“Those we have gathered in witness here this night, take the promises made by this couple to your daytime graves, and do not let them forget what they swore to one another now.” That was their cue: “I give myself to this being in blood and honor.” Godric and Aurelia spoke in quiet unison. And suddenly they were traditionally promised. Neither could bare to grant any more words or looks to the other as they parted for the remainder of the night. 

Aurelia found Korun privately and melted into her misery. “I don't want to marry him,” she lamented. For a moment, Korun looked agreeable with his mouth turned down into a frown and his brows creased in concern. A flicker of hope ignited in Aurelia’s chest at this sight, thinking that perhaps she had misjudged this man. His thin hand came to rest upon her delicate cheek, the thumb even stroking the skin there as a loving father might. “Aurelia,” his voice was smooth like honey. “I would let everyone in this nest fuck you if it meant that my power remained intact.”

Then he turned away from her in a motion of feathers and black wool.


	3. Ghostwoods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Godric and Eric return home. Aurelia is introduced to her new people.

A cold wind blew and the ravens cried as Godric trained his eyes on the vast darkness of the horizon. This wind whipped the tangled mess of ashy hair into his face and the boy knew he would return to frost when the journey was completed.

His fiancee was tucked into the corner of the carriage, her head covered with a shawl and leaning against the side. She was still wearing the engagement gown, for it was the only clothing she owned but Godric had draped a fur of his own over her shoulders. In any case she hadn't seemed to care much for anything since he had told her where he was taking her. 

“To the Ghostwoods, where I call home,” he informed her; _and where you are meant to call home too_. But he could not ask that of her just yet. Aurelia was a baby vampire whose new brain was filled only with her incessant hunger and confusion; it could not possibly matter to her where she went. 

The first problem could be easily remedied: large casks of blood had been stored in their belongings that only Aurelia would take large part in; Godric was old enough to go weeks without feeding for sustenance, and Eric had outgrown the crazed bloodlust of his youth, and now fed more normally. 

Godric was coming upon his 1300 th year from what he could tell; by far the oldest creature in this area second only to Korun’s impressive 2150 years. Others older than Godric existed, as Korun enjoyed taunting him with, but any vampire over the age of a millennia was a rare phenomenon. Korun seemed to expect that Godric had an ego as big as he, and that age and status mattered as much to the eternal boy as it did to his elder. 

A lull in the wind provided Godric with the chance to announce that they were leaving. It would have been much quicker to travel by flight for the boy, but his traveling companions did not have such an advanced skill; and Aurelia would need time to learn her new capabilities. For now horses and a carriage house on large wheels would take them through the open roads and fields to the line of trees that marked the entrance to Ghostwoods.

The black beast beneath Godric was as strong and temperamental as its rider. The stallion had been an unlikely friend to the vampire; one of the few animals who did not shy away in terror at the smell of death on his flesh. The people of Ghostwoods like to believe that the horse had once belonged to Julius Caesar, and that it had returned to earth after carrying its former master into the depths of hell. It was considered retribution that the Gaul would take over the trusted steed of the man who had been in charge of destroying his home. He let the people have their tall tales because even the undead liked stories, and in Ghostwoods most of the stories revolved around its warden, Godric.

He led in front along with Eric, who was a skilled horseman. The two exchanged glances as their night-long journey commenced; Eric looked relieved to be making Korun’s nest a part of the past. So was Godric.

The carriage house carrying the girl rolled along steadily after them followed by their supply wagon. Along with the blood they took few other material items: furs made from the pelts of wolves, hides of leather, a bundle of bones, and small bottles of oils. Some had been from a trade, while the rest was meant for the ritual practice of the priestess of Ghostwoods. The oldest vampires still retained much of their pagan-born beliefs, and the priestess called Neva was the second oldest vampire in Ghostwoods.

At one time Godric had worshipped the elements as well; he had been permanently marked with a symbol to denote the water in his soul. His status as human had been one of importance; a shaman of sorts at only the age of 18. Although, anyone at that age was considered a man grown. These beliefs were a part of his natural fiber, and although he had found himself growing past the point of asking the gods for favors, the power of nature still had a way of influencing him. When he was just a baby vampire, his cruel maker had told him that there were no gods; only Death. Perhaps that was why the boy had fashioned himself Death in disguise.

No matter his own faith, Godric allowed freedom in Ghostwoods; but everyone there seemed to share a similar mind. It was why he counted himself lucky; being the warden of those of a seemingly collective mind, as if they had found each other in the thick of the foggy woods and called it home. 

He wondered what they would think of his engagement, not to mention this girl he was bringing home. Not in well over a decade had anyone new become a part of their clan, and now they were meant to welcome another; a princess. Yes, Godric had been impressed with Korun’s scouting ability but Ghostwoods was nothing like the island that Aurelia was used to calling home; if she had enjoyed her life there, then she was not going to find the same comfort in the eerie place of Godric’s domain. 

One thing was certain, the people of Ghostwoods were not particularly fond of Korun; perhaps why they loved Godric so much, as he was nothing like the raven man. Korun had not visited Ghostwoods in over thirty years, as he seemed to understand the atmosphere of hostility when he was there. It was the one place where his highly advanced age did not matter to the younger vampires; their loyalty was to Godric and to him only.

The horses trotted tirelessly over flat grass, streams, and eventually hills; they were getting closer. Judging by the horizon, it seemed they would spend another three hours on horseback until they reached the outskirts of the protected village by magic. 

Godric looked over at Eric, who had his ice-colored eyes closed as if sleeping in his saddle. Despite his hands free of reins, and his thighs loose on the sides of his own mount, Eric was still a much more graceful rider than Godric considered himself. The Viking of old was wearing wolfskin around his neck, leather boots, and a cloak of midnight blue; he still looked just as royal as the night Godric had first seen him. This was looking like a pattern to the boy: he seemed to be surrounded by royalty, as well as those who wished to be so. Godric had never coveted such a lifestyle; he had never coveted much at all in life, and in death only blood and destruction had been his vices until he managed to control even them. This was what growth looked like in the undead, as they were strictly forbidden to mature physically. Godric may always look barely a man, but his wisdom and wit beyond years would shroud him in eternal mystery.  
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Hours later their small entourage reached the line of tall, gray trees and a large cemetery cross that marked arrival to Ghostwoods. Now Eric’s eyes were open and his mouth was smiling; even he thought of this place as home. The two men exchanged looks of relief to once again find themselves in a place of familiarity, but when Godric turned his head back to glance at the carriage, Aurelia was still nowhere to be seen. This entire journey she had kept herself hidden like a stowaway. 

They pressed forward, clearing the initial line and bumping over roots and stones. The trees here looked rather dead; their leaves rarely coming in, and when they did they were already red and crispy. It was as if these woods knew exactly the sort of crowd they kept hidden. Now it was winter, and there would be no life in the trees anyway. The small river that wound its way through the village was mostly ice, and Godric watched the frozen motes float in the opposite direction as they moved. A path of dark mud led them towards the central settlement where the resident vampires had erected houses to make it appear like any regular town. 

The dark horse whinnied in greeting as they turned the final bend. A boy of no more than ten lifted his pale face to see the return of his warden. He grinned toothily as he turned his head and whistled. Suddenly there was movement as more of the undead emerged at the noise. The young boy beamed as he trailed Godric’s stallion, skipping after the elder. More of his people nodded their heads in greeting as he passed, and most followed after him with gathered goods: viles of blood, fresh clothing, water for his horse, soap, anything that they believed he might want after the journey. 

He smiled in return, reveling in the familiar pale faces he had missed even after only less than a month away. He was certain to hear laments over how they had suffered through his absence, although these were all capable people.

The horses stopped in front of the rudimentary pavilion that had allegedly been standing for centuries; “The Hall of The Reaper” they called it, for it was where council meetings were held in honor of choices made in the benefit of their sleepy town. 

Godric dismounted into the small crowd and was immediately rushed. Someone took his horse and led it away without being asked while several other vampires vied for their warden’s attention. “You must be famished; Korun did not feed you well, I am sure of it.”  
“You'll want to wash.”  
“Do not worry about us this night, my Lord. You need your rest first.”  
Sentiments like these continued until Neva the priestess cut through the crowd to reach Godric.

The female was older in biological age than most others here; likely somewhere in her sixties, but still holding on to a hint of the fairness she undoubtedly had as a young woman. Her hair was dark with streaks of gray, and her eyes were green; eyes almost even wiser than Godric’s. Neva had lived through many hardships before finding herself in Ghostwoods and offering her eternal servitude to whomever ruled it. 

It was rumored that she had made over twenty progenies, all of whom perished. She looked at it as a curse, and swore to herself that she would never turn another human again. It was unclear what exactly she had been like in her years of life, except that she had extensive knowledge of human medicine, psychology, herbology, and alchemy. She was an intelligent and powerful woman, but she was wholly peculiar. 

Shorter than Godric, she looked up at him with a small smile on her lightly lined face. Sometimes Godric looked at her and thought of his mother. But he didn’t remember his mother; just that he knew in his gut that she had been a good woman. 

“Whatever our king needs he will have.” She looked at Godric but said it to everyone. He was not legally a king, but titles were fluid to Neva, especially when it came to Ghostwoods; she believed that it was a place deserving of the status of a kingdom, and Godric the status of a king. The villagers held their collective tongues as they waited for Godric to announce what it was he needed. All he told them was, “please, do not fret on my account. You know well the sort I am.” Which meant that he preferred to take care of himself despite the ever present assistance that anyone and everyone here offered him.

A sort of distribution took place as the crowd thinned. Something, likely a woman, caught Eric’s eye and he disappeared as well. Women were always looking at Eric; alive or dead. Now only Godric and the priestess stood in front of the pavilion with the weight of the unannounced carriage house behind them. His grayish eyes glanced to the wooden structure.  
“You've brought us a visitor?” Neva pressed. Godric chewed on his lip before shaking his head. “No, not a visitor. A resident.” _A bride_. Neva seemed to catch on to something Godric had not said, and she peered at the carriage too. “Tell me.”

So he did. He confessed to the deal he had struck with Korun, which gave necessity to the explanation that Ghostwoods was under threat by a clan much larger, and more powerful. They needed Korun’s alliance to remain relevant. As much as Godric may have despised that.

Neva listened well, as she was known to do, and offered reassurance. “At least she is is young----- newborn really. That means you can teach her our own ways and not the backwards manners her maker would have no doubt cursed her with.” Then the priestess had to ask: “what is she like?”

Truthfully Godric had no way to answer that. He had spoken a total of a handful of words to Aurelia and she no more. “She was a princess. Young. Stubborn. Lovely.” Neva smiled again before Godric continued with a favor he would need of her. “She is alone here, and I am sure she would appreciate someone to help her... She is a woman. I don’t know anything about women.” While that wasn't entirely true, it was really that Godric had no experience with taking care of anyone so different from himself. The priestess seemed to understand. She nodded dutifully and promised, “I will look after her and make sure she is comfortable here. If you two are betrothed then she is important to us all now.” Which meant that Neva would assimilate Aurelia properly, and wouldn’t allow there to be any discordance between her and the others.

“I should like to meet her now.” Neva decided. The two vampires turned towards the carriage to see a large black raven sitting atop it. It was staring at them with disturbingly intelligent eyes, flapping its large wings and screeching at them.

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_You may not ever be happy, but I saved you from a lifetime of nightmares_. That was the last thing Korun had said to her. Those words were the only thing Aurelia could think about as she huddled in the bumpy carriage. A lifetime of nightmares... But this was a nightmare; a waking nightmare that would never end. So she wouldn’t be happy and she would walk through this eternity as one of the monsters. 

Yes, she knew she had changed and become something that wasn’t quite human. She knew that she was like the cruel man with the ravens: a creature who did not breathe air, eat food, or sleep at night. Now instead she did not need to breathe at all (although she still did out of habit), she drank blood, and slept during the daylight hours. Impossibly enough, she enjoyed all of these things as if they were natural occurrences in her life now. Just as she had once enjoyed eating cakes and roasts, she now found immense pleasure in the taste of blood. It did not matter whose blood, the type, or any other of the particulars that the older people seemed to make standard. Aurelia had no standards when it came to blood.

The way she lived riddled her with guilt. Her people had died in cold blood, and yet now she drank it almost non-stop. With every necessary sip she took her memory showed her the images of her bloody husband; now she probably would have enjoyed tasting that blood. Thoughts like those were the ones that made her retch up the blood from her belly down the front of her gown; the only one she owned. It only made her hungry again, and so this vicious cycle continued throughout most of the journey.

The carriage had but one small window, and Aurelia had tried to determine where they were going but because she had never left the shores of Castamere, everything looked utterly foreign to her.

Long hours passed until the house on wheels came to a halt. She had heard voices, many voices, but Aurelia did not leave the comfort of where she had sat for these many hours. 

She recognized the voice of Godric, that strange boy whom she was supposed to marry; that thought was another that almost caused her to retch. She didn’t want to listen; she didn’t care. She would formulate a plan, any plan, to escape. From there she had no ideas where she would go or what would happen to her; certainly she could not return to Korun. Perhaps she would find a place to die quietly so that she could be with Max and their son in the sky.

Sweet thoughts of salvation were dashed with the wrenching open of the door. Aurelia crushed her body against the far side of the wooden wall and stared wildly at the face which appeared in the open space. A woman her late mother’s age was looking at her with kind green eyes. Those eyes searched and evaluated Aurelia before a small smile formed on the accompanying lips. “Look at you.” Her voice was low and equally as kind. “You look a fright.” A mild statement. Aurelia looked just as if she had died; a corpse with tangled hair and a wild look in its clear eyes. The woman extended a hand to her as if coaxing an animal from a cage. Aurelia glanced down at the fingers full of copper rings, the wrist equally as stacked with bracelets. “I promise I won’t hurt you, my lady. Not ever.” This was the first promise of that sort Aurelia had received yet and it melted her heart a bit. 

She slid her leg out from under her and sat upright on the bench. As she moved closer to the woman she cooed words of encouragement to her. If Aurelia had her way, she would cry in the arms of this woman the first chance she got. 

Now she was perched on the edge of her seat when the woman took her hand and helped her down from the carriage. Aurelia emerged from her hiding place with the better half of her face smeared in the same blood that stained the front of her green dress. Her eyes were reddened as they looked about her new environment. There were many other eyes on her but she did not glance in their directions.

She had found herself in a forest, and it was magnificent. The tallest, thickest trees she had ever imagined surrounded them from all sides like an ancient wall of security. Somewhere behind her lay a gurgling river rippling over its own freezing surface. The structures here were modest but they looked cozy and completely unlike any place the undead would call home. If she hadn’t sensed it for herself, she would have thought that these people were not undead at all.

“Welcome to Ghostwoods, my lady.” The woman smiled kindly again. The place was true to name, Aurelia thought; it was ghostly in all of its beauty. Finally she met eyes with the woman but did not say anything; no words would come. All she wanted was to look upon this kind face more; the only gentle face she had seen in weeks.

Then another face came into her view as her eyes were drawn to it. His eyes were so old and powerful they were frightening to look into; much more so than Korun’s. Godric looked worn as he watched the two women; had his face looked this tired before? 

Those gray eyes moved from her to a place above her head, the mouth twisting into a scowl as the bird fluttered down on large black wings. Claws dug themselves into Aurelia’s shoulder and she froze. A flap of wings sounded in her ear, rustling her hair as those wings folded protectively behind her head. The raven screamed and everyone stepped away. The woman with the kind green eyes stared disbelievingly while Godric carried on his scowl from behind. She had brought ravens to Ghostwoods.

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The two young women were gossiping. “He is absolutely foul. I don’t care if he is a prince.” The other, who was fighting the silvery blonde tangles in Aurelia’s hair nodded her agreement. “It is because he is a prince that he does as he pleases.”

The third, unspeaking girl had learned from these two that the progeny of Godric was currently not well liked among the female population of Ghostwoods. Eric the Northman was inarguably good-looking; tall, built, and with hair like golden silk. He had been Viking royalty in his previous life and it showed plainly. 

What was also plain was the fact that Eric had bedded nearly every woman in the town, including these two jealous girls. 

Hatch and Celia had been ‘given’ to Aurelia in a sense; they were the equivalent of handmaidens, and they attended to the princess on a regular basis. They were both close to Aurelia’s biological age, but had around seventy years each. Most of what they did before coming to Aurelia’s aid was whoring and sewing clothes. They spoke openly of their time spent as prostitutes, even claiming to be mistresses of famous human men. They were very different than Aurelia, and hearing them tell their stories had become one of her new hobbies.

“It’s just unfortunate that he is not to be denied,” Hatch said of her inability to stay away from Eric’s bed. It seemed to Aurelia that despite the involved persons avoidance of monogamy, they were all very cross with each other about infidelity. The most perturbed by Eric’s romping was Hatch, who was thin as a twig with hair as brown and straight as one too. Celia, with lovely dark skin and eyes like burning coals was constantly chiding her companion on her discrepancy when it came to Eric the Northman; one moment she was simply in love with him, and then the next she could stand to be near him. 

“Perhaps I just need a lesson in keeping my legs closed,” Hatch thought aloud. She left her job of cleaning beneath Aurelia’s nails and looked at her pointedly. “Aurelia can surely give me some tips.” 

The girl in the chair felt her eyes go wide from her attendant’s bluntness. This was in no way how any of her past handmaidens used to speak to her, or frankly anyone. Hatch saw the way she had embarassed her and began laughing. “You’d be blushing right now if you could, my lady.” Celia batted away Hatch with the hairbrush. “Stop it. Leave the girl alone.” Celia had consistently been more conservative with her words, while Hatch rarely ever filtered out what she said. 

“Oh, I don’t mean any harm,” she reassured. “Just that our princess is very demure; Prudish really.” Her brown doe eyes wore a sort of pity, as if she truly felt sorry for Aurelia that she wasn’t so experienced. “I’m not a virgin, you know.” Aurelia made an attempt to save face. Celia and Hatch giggled. “We know that, princess. We know everything about you; it is our job to know.” 

“I only mean that, well, you’ve been here for several days and never once shared a bed with your fiancee.” Now Aurelia felt beyond embarrassed by Hatch’s crudeness. She furrowed her brows at the girl: “and I have no intention to.”

The girls exchanged looks over Aurelia’s head. Celia halted the brush in the pale strands of hair before coming around to face Aurelia and kneel down before her as Hatch did. They both looked concerned. “You have no intention to, to what, sleep with your husband?” The question came slowly, carefully, and from Celia. Aurelia shook her head. “No. Why do I have to?” Because it was not as if Godric needed to get a child from Aurelia, or remain monogamous to her; she knew how these people were, and her marriage would not at all be like it was with Max.

“It is not a matter of having to, but a matter of wanting to,” Hatch told her. “Although he could command it of you, not as your husband but as your Lord.” Men and women were equal in that sense, as physical differences in strength were erased after death. A vampire husband could not command his vampire wife to do anything she did not want to, which was vitally different than a human husband and wife. A lord though, that was a different story. She may become his wife, but Aurelia and everyone else in Ghostwoods would be under the command of Godric for as long as he ruled.

Would he command such a thing of her though? Then Aurelia got to thinking that he didn’t really need to verbalize such a thing to her anyway; he was immensely stronger than her and could take her easily if that was what he wanted. 

“He is a good man, our warden. He will take care of you and give you whatever you want.” Celia promised, and Hatch nodded eagerly in agreement. “As women we have great power. As undead women we have even greater power. Our bodies are both weapons and gifts.” Hatch rose and perched on the arm of Aurelia’s chair. “Some believe that we come from a woman; as humans come from Adam, we come from Lilith. That makes the females the truly strong ones.” Aurelia had never considered this because she had never known these beliefs of her new kind existed. 

“So we are only worth the value of our bodies?” That did not sound very liberating to Aurelia, but rather much the same way human men thought. Now Celia shook her head, a nice smile on her lips. “No, princess. Our bodies are ours to govern; that is what is so great about our species. We are not owned by the men. All that Hatch means is that it is valuable for women of our kind of learn all their powers. Our bodies just happen to be one of those.”  
“Since the dawn of humanity the female form has been coveted; it’s started wars, art, music. It is a cultural phenomenon. Man did not come from Adam’s rib, princess, he came from the womb of a woman.”

Aurelia contemplated this; it made her feel like a powerful creature indeed. Her sexuality had never been something she had put much thought into before; she had only had sex with one man, after all. It had been her duty to lie with Max but she had never despaired in it because she loved him, and oftentimes she enjoyed it too. It was true that her late husband had coveted her own form; the way he looked upon her naked body was proof enough of that. But to use sex as a tool of power; that was something she had never had the need of considering.

“Lord Godric will be a good husband. In many ways.” Hatch continued her naughty talking, even twirling a strand of Aurelia’s hair through her own finger. The girl stared at her frisky handmaiden. “Have you-------?”  
“With Godric? No.” Hatch looked as if that possibility were an insurmountable feat. “Although not for lack of trying,” she added.  
“He is very old, princess, and experienced. It’s been said that he is one of the greatest lovers in existence. Do you not feel the power coming from him?” Aurelia had, but she hadn’t attributed it to anything sexual; perhaps she wasn’t old and knowledgeable enough to. Compared to Hatch and Celia she was very ignorant about this thing; she might as well be a virgin.

“Who says those kinds of things?” The princess asked to seem disgusted as much to satisfy her curiosity about the gossip. “It is not as if he has not bedded people here in the past; we have all been here a long time. Besides, humans come into the territory too.” Now Aurelia could not hide her curiosity at all: “with the priestess Neva?” Because she was very kind and beautiful in her own way. The girls laughed at the idea. “No! The priestess does not couple; she claims she does not have those needs any longer.”  
“But I say she performed some black magic on herself. That, or she has nothing between her legs.” Hatch spoke freely again.

“Who do you suppose taught Prince Eric his tricks?” The twiggy girl whispered into Aurelia’s ear. She recoiled. “We like what we like, little princess, men and women both. Anyone who strikes us. That is another thing we undead do not shame each other for as the humans do.” But thinking about Godric and Eric together in that way only made Aurelia think of her own maker, Korun. She would never in all eternity want her own maker to touch her like that.

“I’ve tasted the fruits that both sexes have to offer and I enjoy them both the same.” Hatch showed Aurelia her teeth as her fingers stroked the now smooth pelt of the princess’ hair. “You’re going to have needs, ones that you will not be able to deny just as you cannot deny the blood. With a husband who will be so good to you, you will find yourself lusting after him. I do not tell you this to alarm you or anger you, princess. Only to let you see the truth of your nature.” 

“We are creatures of many sins, and we take turns loving each one like a child.” Hatch lowered herself to the ground again, wrapping her arms around Celia’s waist. The dark girl locked eyes with her friend and without hesitation, brought her lips to the other’s. This was a sight Aurelia had never seen, nor was she sure that she wanted to but her eyes would not look elsewhere. 

The kissing continued while a pale hand reached for the laces of the simple gray gown covering Celia’s body. Loosened, the fabric fell away to reveal a lot of beautiful brown skin. Hatch immediately went for a dark nipple, taking it into her mouth and sucking while its owner moaned. Still, Aurelia watched even though she knew it was shameful to intrude on this intimate moment.

Now the remainder of the gray gown was gone, and Celia’s lithe body relaxed to the floor in front of Aurelia’s seat. Hatch created a trail of kisses down the length of Celia’s flat stomach, not stopping before reaching her destination. Upon contact, the girl on her back moaned sharply. Aurelia could see perfectly the motions of Hatch’s tongue between the other’s legs. There was a feeling between her own legs that she had only ever felt with her husband, but now Aurelia inexplicably wanted to be touched as well. Her conscious was struggling against her instinctive desires but the pleasured noises Celia was producing was making that battle very difficult. 

She finished quickly, as Hatch was clearly skilled and they had clearly done this with one another before. They both looked at Aurelia. Then Hatch rose and leaned in to her princess and boldly kissed her mouth. “You will want to learn how to use the power of your body, and we can teach you.”

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Frost covered the ground and it was only early into October. It was going to be a long cold winter; the smell in the air foretold it. The warden’s boots crunched the earth as he walked purposefully. It had been nearly ten nights now that he had returned to Ghostwoods, and of those he hadn’t spoken to the newest resident even once. 

Aurelia had spent her nights hidden away in the stone cottage mostly alone. Only the two young vampires called Hatch and Celia had visited her on a regular basis, and Godric had entrusted them to help Aurelia feel at home here. The girls, and the bird.

Godric knew that the raven which had followed them this whole way had been keeping close to the princess. He had heard it hunting mice, and he swore that he could feel its beady little eyes on him when he walked through the forest. It was like having Korun here and that bothered Godric greatly.

The strong wooden door in front of him stood like a silent sentry but he did not knock. Godric heard the girl inside, as well as the raven who immediately began croaking his arrival. 

It did not take long after that for Aurelia to appear in the open space where the door just was. The hands and companionship of Hatch and Celia had done the girl well; they had managed her hair which now hung to the middle of her back in shiny waves, her eyes looked brighter and not so sad, and she looked well fed. Almost an entirely new person from the last time Godric had seen her.

Politely she stepped aside, silently welcoming him inside. “Actually, I came to invite you to take a walk with me.” He did not have much of a plan, but the boy knew that he needed to at least try to talk to the girl; they were still engaged and hadn’t had a conversation even once. 

Aurelia nodded but her mouth turned down. As soon as she stepped beyond the threshold the raven began squawking madly. She showed her face to the bird and it quieted, ruffling its feathers as if to tell her that he was not happy about her decision.

They walked in silence in the direction of the water. It was an easy silence Godric noticed, not one that needed to be filled with words. For a creature that preferred quiet, the boy did not at all mind this situation but he knew that he would have to say something soon if Aurelia did not.

The dark river came into sight when they reached the peak of the hill. The vampires of Ghostwoods were unsure what any humans had referred to this body of water as, but they themselves called it The Black Wash. In the dark of night the water always looked many shades of black and gray; they would never know what it looked like in the light of day.

The shore was rocky and dangerous in most places save for a small strip of dirty sand. This was a place he had been many times before to swim or throw rocks or simply think. It was the first place he and Eric had come to upon arriving in this place; a place they had no idea would become so important to them both.

The black of Aurelia’s new gown fluttered around her legs, and it made Godric once again think of the foul bird. “That raven is living with you.” Aurelia turned her face towards him with quizzical blue eyes. “He will not leave my side for long at all,” she admitted. “I think he is protecting me in some way.”

That was not what Godric would call it at all, but rather the bird was a spy. Who knew, perhaps Korun had learned to converse with the birds as well. “It mocks me.”  
“It is an animal,” Aurelia protested gently.  
“And so are we.” Now he turned his stormy eyes on her to see her considering that. No doubt that the girl already knew about her savage ways; it had been reported to him that she drank blood with a healthy appetite. 

“You want it gone.” There was a hollowness in her voice. Godric fixed a typical stony look on his face but shook his head. “I will not command that of you, nor am I even certain that I can.” Meaning that the bird was uncontrollable. He could kill it, but how long after would Korun simply send a new one? The way he began to see it, this one creature would be an easier threat to combat than an army of them.

“It came from Korun.” She could barely say his name; her maker’s name. It was a question that did not necessarily need an answer; Aurelia had seen the unkindness of ravens in Korun’s nest, as did everyone who had ever known him. “He is a demon, isn’t he?” She practically trembled when she spoke of him. Korun’s influence extended even beyond the vast fields that separated them now, and that angered Godric.

“You could say that of him.” Those intelligent eyes clouded with vexation as unwanted memories flooded the space behind them. No three miles with Korun were flat; the man was unpredictable, and heartless, and difficult. The way Aurelia looked at him seemed to beg what he had wanted to avoid: a conversation about the ancient leech.

“You will never get the truth from him; anything that is taken as fact about Korun has been passed around from mouth to mouth.” Because he was so old, and everyone liked to tell stories. Korun was more like a myth than an actual walking, talking individual. “They say he was born in the Carpathian Mountains as a Druid; a tribal man who has always been known as Korun: raven. Was he a husband, a father? No one knows these things and the man’s stories are always changing.” Godric watched the expression on Aurelia’s face as she finally heard about the man who had made her. “He has been a king, a doctor, a farmer, a beggar... Once he had five beautiful children, then suddenly he claimed to have none. He has made plain that he spent his entire breathing life a part of the same lost clan; but those who do not know any better always believe his lies.” 

“But you know the truth?” She asked almost hopefully. Godric shrugged slightly. “I know more than most.”  
“That is why he fears you.”  
Her opinion opened his eyes to something he had never before considered; the one person who attempted to master him could very well fear him too. He wanted to know why Aurelia thought that. “Korun is nearly twice my age; I could never overpower him.”  
“You know more about him than he would care for anyone to know; you have a realm filled with people who see you as their king; the relationship with your progeny is strong. He has plenty to fear from you.” Aurelia peered at him with caution, hoping that her perspective would not aggravate him into an argument.

“Those are merely things he could be envious of, but not fearful.” Godric needed to turn Aurelia’s attention away from a way of thinking that could end badly for her; she may be in Ghostwoods now but she would always be Korun’s progeny.


	4. The Night Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Godric reflects (which can only mean angst), Eric makes a discovery, Russell remembers his past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I understand how AU this fic is. I feel like I get my inspiration more from A Song of Ice and Fire than TB. So if you're a fan of GoT and TB, then you'll hopefully find yourself in luck.

_He fears you._

Godric had been thinking much of that idea lately; unsure whether he felt gratified, or pitied, or betrayed. He had almost counted on Korun to be his opposite, his one true obstacle. That superiority complex threaded so tightly into the fiber of Korun’s very being now seemed to fray in Godric’s image of him. 

Feeling fear was problematic in that it proved that Korun had some semblance of perception, and perhaps he was not a complete psychopath. 

Yes, the boy knew that his elder had crafted a careful facade that would have one believe that he did not have any irrational fears; and wasn’t his alleged fear of Godric irrational? 

If Korun truly felt threatened by Godric, enough that even his own newborn progeny noticed it, then he could easily have the boy destroyed. Or perhaps Aurelia was merely a very perceptive girl and Korun did not believe that his mask was cracking at all.

Godric lifted himself from the cold stone floor, feeling the absence of pressure on his back. He enjoyed sensations of numbing coldness: icy water, frosted earth, freezing rain; anything that he couldn't possibly have survived if he were still a breathing boy. He had walked the world barefoot and half naked when he was still savage; he simply had never possessed a mind for modesty or a caution towards poor weather.

The shelter he had been granted was no more than an old, hollowed-out stable. It was the largest dwelling in the village but its inhabitant kept it plainly decorated. Godric was far from materialistic, and really did not have many worldly possessions whatsoever. All that he had collected remained housed on one modest shelf of rotting wood: two brown-paged books, one rope necklace, a vile of some human concoction he found interesting, an old pot of ink and papers he practiced writing in multiple languages on. His people here had gifted him with plenty of other things, and Godric had accepted them to appease the gifters. 

To say the least, he would never go hungry, unclean, unclothed, or bored here; luxuries he had spent centuries without. 

Because he was warden, and because the citizens had a particular fondness for him, they were almost constantly bringing him goods they had made themselves or offering him special treatment. He had acquired numerous articles of clothing sewed specifically for his body, metal pins and rings and assorted pieces that he mostly did not recognize but were beautiful all the same, bone-handled daggers, leather whips, and a most unusual scythe made of the only material substance known as harmful to vampires: silver.

Godric had long since held a fascination with war and armies. Before Eric and before Ghostwoods, he had made a hobby of tracking the human campaigns and blending into their nighttime raids. 

His life had ended with war, and then it had begun again with war. A storm was constantly brewing inside of him always on the precipice of breaking.

He had lived countless lives and he would live countless more. When Godric closed his eyes he could relive them all in vibrant color. 

_SLAVE. You are a slave always._ The voice inside was what remained of his chains. _A slave in your own skin, a slave to the night, a slave to the blood_ it told him. 

Years of torture had left more than just the angry red mark on his back; Godric still had waking nightmares of that dirty face and the hands that had shackled him.

Standing in front of the looking glass he noticed how similar to shackles his dark tattoos appeared to be. They had once been signs of power and importance, but the taking of his home and his identity had only turned them into brands of inferiority; a permanent sign of who he was and where he came from.

Then the dirty man had branded him with his own marking: SLAVE, it screamed. 

There was nothing to fear from a slave.

Godric turned away from the mirror to dress. He preferred neutral colors: blacks, grays, browns. There was no color in his world. 

Outside the people of Ghostwoods were going about whatever it was they chose to do this night. Most of them had found occupations of sorts to keep them busy; they enjoyed the luxury of not having to move each night for survival. Everything they needed was right here.

Neva the priestess had perfected an enchantment of sorts, a spell that protected the limits of Ghostwoods from any unwelcomed intruders; intruders who walked on two legs at least. She claimed that animals did not abide by the laws of magic, but Godric had always liked animals anyway. Animals who did not fly on two black wings, at least.

They housed seamstresses, a writer, soldiers, a stable keeper, a barber, even a blacksmith. All of these people who had led happy lives before their untimely deaths wanted to create a community like the ones they used to belong to. And Godric had never wanted to prevent them from doing so.

As he walked through the town, everyone stopped to bow their heads or offer kind words. He would place a gentle expression on his face for them in return.

The place where Neva stayed was at the edge of town where she could practice her craft in isolation. The woman was always helpful and made herself available no matter what.

The warden entered upon her call to do so. Inside there was a fire burning in the hearth with a kettle hanging above it. Dried flowers and plants of many sorts hung from the ceiling, and so did animal bones and skins. Her altar was intricately decorated, and candles were lit on every surface. Neva was dedicated to her craft entirely.

Sitting at her table was Eric, his tall frame making the furniture look dwarfed. Both vampires smiled at the third as he entered.

“ _Fader_ ,” Eric stopped his carving to gaze upon his maker, whom he clearly adored. Godric caught a glimpse of what his childe was doing: shaving down bone into a neat pile. “You have him working?” Godric turned to Neva who brushed her hands off over the cauldron. “He arrived early and agreed to help me, yes.” She went to stand behind Eric to look at his progress.

Various ingredients for Neva’s potion were displayed on the table. Godric had some experience with this practice, being a shaman in his human life. Although his gifts had revolved around visions, healing, and soul retrieval. He had connected with the spiritual world to perform his tasks while Neva depended on spellwork. 

“This is almost to completion, My Lord.” Neva looked expectantly at Godric, breaking him from his memories. _You are only a slave._

“Good.” His mouth frowned.

The previous night he had gone to the priestess in need of help. Paranoia was not typically a trait of Godric’s but the arrival of Aurelia had quickened his ability to worry. 

Ever since she had told him that she believed in Korun’s fear, he had been harboring a concern that she was tricking him. That concern quickly morphed into something much uglier: a suspicion that Korun had fed her instructors to spy on Godric and Ghostwoods; this was only made worse by the raven who refused to leave.

Neva had agreed to concoct a truth potion that would force the drinker to reveal the true answer of any question asked of her. It was a wicked thing to do, but Godric could not say anything more to the girl without having his troubles alleviated. 

Eric happily handed over the bone crumbs to the priestess who deposited them into the boiling water.  
“What are you going to ask her, _Fader_?” The Viking had the grin of a deviant on his lips.  
“If she is here as a spy for Korun; if she writes to him and sends her raven off with the information.” Just saying it made him feel worse.

“What if she tells you something you don’t want to hear?”  
“That is the danger of magic, Prince Eric.” Neva answered and then her eyes went to her Lord. Godric nodded solemnly. He had to believe that he would accept whatever it was they discovered.

The priestess added several more ingredients to the cauldron before facing them again. “It is ready.”

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Celia had been instructed to bring Aurelia to Neva’s home under the guise that they would be exploring her odd collections. The girls’ laughter could be heard from down the path as they arrived.

When the door opened, the pale girl's face fell at the sight of the three vampires inside; of course she had not been expecting Godric and Eric to be there. 

She turned to face Celia again but the brown-skinned girl was already apologizing as the door was shut to separate them.

“It is good too see you again, princess.” Neva bowed before taking her hand gently and leading her to the small table. Any evidence had been cleared away, and now it was set for what looked like tea.

“I know that this is very unexpected but we wanted to surprise you with a special treat.” The older woman led the younger to a creaky seat and pulled it out for her. Godric noticed how Neva was looking at him, expecting him to say something.

“Neva has made us a tea. It is a sort of tradition for the two people joining in marriage to drink it together.” Godric sat opposite Aurelia, and Eric lowered himself into the seat on the other side. 

“And since I will be performing the wedding ceremony, it is customary for myself to join you.” Now Neva sat, her reassuring hand on Aurelia’s shoulder. 

The girl stared accusatory at Godric, as if she knew that something was amiss. Those pale eyes began to make him feel uncomfortable.

“I had no idea of this tradition, Lady Neva. Hatch and Celia have been telling me most everything about Ghostwoods and what I can expect here. I suppose they simply forgot to mention this tradition.” Her nostrils flared at the ancient boy.

Neva patted her hand kindly. “The girls know much, yes, but not quite everything. This is a tradition but this is also a secret; only those who have wed in the realm have participated.” 

Godric was truly impressed by the priestess’ improvisation. 

“It is not anything special, really. More of a discussion of the upcoming ceremony----- which will be upon us sooner than you expect it!” Neva beamed at the girl, who nodded politely.  
“Yes, I haven’t been told anything at all of plans for my own wedding.” Aurelia’s eyes had a vice-lock grip on Godric, daring him to say anything to the contrary.

“Then let us not waste anymore time.” Neva raised her cup, which was filled with a blood mixture to mimic the look of Aurelia’s potion. The others followed suit and took their sips. All but Aurelia.

Godric glowered at Aurelia over his cup. “Why are you not drinking, Aurelia?”  
“I just ate. My apologies. I was not aware that I had to save room for tea.”

His cup hit the table with a sharp noise. “I’d like for you to drink with me as my future bride.” His own eyes matched the ice in hers. 

He could see her grind her teeth together. “Anything for you, _My Lord_.” And she tipped the potion back into her throat.

Instantly her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she lost control of her conscious thoughts and gave them over to her captors. Aurelia was a limp puppet, her sole purpose under the spell to give any truths asked of her.

The three vampires crowded around her, staring at the whiteness of her eyeballs. 

“What is your name?” Neva tested.  
“Aurelia Marius of Castamere.”  
“Where are you?”  
“In a place called Ghostwoods.”  
“What are you?”  
“I was a princess, and now I am dead.”

The priestess nodded to Godric; the potion had worked properly.

The warden crouched in front of the girl, his eyes searching her vacant face.  
“Why are you here?” His voice was hoarse.  
“Because I was given to the warden as his fiancee.”  
He would need to be more specific.  
“Who gave you to the warden?”  
“Korun.”  
“Who is Korun?”  
“My maker. The nest-master in Raven’s Peak.”

Thus far all of her answers were the truth, but they were not anything that Godric did not already know. He needed to find out more.

“Did Korun give you the raven?”  
“No.”  
Godric paused, his brows coming together.  
“Who gave you the raven?”  
“I don’t know. No one.”

He could feel Neva and Eric exchange glances behind him.

“Did Korun tell you to spy on the warden and the people of Ghostwoods, and to report back to him anything that you see or hear?”  
“No.” The girl in the chair answered without hesitation.

Godric turned over his shoulder to share looks with the others. Eric shrugged, but Neva was grinning softly, as if her own assumptions had been proved correct. 

He tried again: “did Korun give you any instructions to harm the people of Ghostwoods?”  
“No.”  
“Did Korun tell you that he was planning on harming any of the people of Ghostwoods?”  
“No.”  
“Did Korun tell you that he feared Godric the warden?”  
“No, he did not tell me. I felt it.”

This was only making Godric feel even more puzzled. The truth was that Korun had not told Aurelia to do anything really but the raven remained a mystery.

“What do you do with the raven that lives with you?”  
“Nothing. He is only a pet. He sits with me, and sometimes brings me trinkets he finds when he is out hunting. He makes me feel less lonely, like I never lost my son.”  
“Your son?”  
“Max’s son. He was never born. I was pregnant with him when I was killed.”

Neva gasped behind him. Godric cast his eyes downward, biting at his lip. This was a thing he had never known; something that Korun had failed to mention except in the form of an expressed ‘inconvenience’ that Godric was just remembering now. But a lost pregnancy was not an inconvenience, and now Godric felt like he had blood on his hands too.

He turned away from Aurelia and brushed past Neva and Eric. “I’m done. I've heard all that I need to.”

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_You are a raven and a raven you will always be._

No amount of ‘Russell Edgington’ he slathered onto his soul would conceal his origins, and this drove the man to madness.

They had said he had always been just shy of a psychotic break; a ticking time bomb dressed in expensive stolen clothing. 

The King of Bird Shit.

That was what the traitors and non-believers called him. Russell planned on ripping each one of their heads off with his own two capable hands.

A two-thousand year long wake of destruction was what he was best known for; ravens do not give, they only take.

And a raven he would always be.

Upon his birth legend says that the night came hours early, and the skies filled with bats, and birds, and monsters of all sorts. Wolves howled, and cats moaned. All of the people's crops wilted and died, and their water supply turned sour. 

The leader of the clan had insisted on killing the babe; giving his small form to the flames to cleanse it of the demon that no doubt lived inside. Korun had been possessed from the start.

But he had also been lucky.

For whatever reason he had been spared, and the baby grew into a boy into a man. He knew things that his clansmen did not believe in, for all of their paganism allowed them. Naturally Korun worshipped the elements, but he also worshipped wealth.

His human home had been far from lavish; no one in his place of birth believed in the power of money. They were not city folk; they made no great riches whatsoever. Korun came to quickly understand that all his people would do was practice and perfect their spirituality. The ambitions between he and them were vastly different.

The man was greedy to say the least. His elders were always trying this incantation, or that charm to ward off the greed that possessed him but they failed time and time again. They had spent so much of their time and energy on Korun that they gave up not long after his twentieth year.

Then the man was truly alone.

The next thirty years went by in a pattern of isolation and delusions; Korun had managed to convince himself that he was someone of great importance stuck in a backwards world of sacrifice.

Until the Night Man came.

In the Carpathian Mountains lived a mythical creature: mostly man but also bat; or bear, or fox... Something of the sort.

He was both feared and revered by Korun’s people, but explicitly warded off by spells and relics. The worst part about him was that he stole innocents from their beds and ate them; the reason for the magic against him.

Well, Korun not only ignored any warnings to keep away during the Night Man’s visits, he specifically went looking for the creature.

And when one looks for trouble, they are bound to find it.

A man of somewhere near fifty, considered rather old in those times, was finally ready to taste his ambitions. The Night Man was known to be eternal, never-changing, and always feared; exactly what Korun wanted for himself.

It had not been difficult to find Him; as if He knew that someone was looking. Acting on rehearsed lines and motions, Korun had bowed deeply before the faceless creature; at least, Korun could never remember seeing His face.

He was not above begging, not for this. Korun had vowed servitude to the Night Man if only he would make him as hated as He. The Night Man had already made His eternal decision before speaking a word, but he did tell Korun one thing: you are already hated all by your own doing.

And that was the night Korun had disappeared into the darkness forever. 

Nothing changed that wasn’t the new power Korun felt coursing through his veins frozen in time. The oath he had given to the Night Man had only been one of his easily crafted lies. In return, the Night Man had refused to help Korun through the worst years of his life; but Korun only laughed.

In fact, his baby years passed soaked in his own desires; and his desires were limitless.

Korun killed openly and endlessly, he stole, he cheated, he continued lying; and lie he did, with the most beautiful men he had ever hoped to see. One satisfaction gave way to another feeling of emptiness. He crafted an empire around him but it was never enough.

Then the wolves came.

Vampires and werewolves had always been notorious enemies but Korun saw an opportunity there that no one else would have ever forged; and he forged it in his own blood.

Of one thing Korun could not be considered as a traditional sanguinist was his lack of veneration for the blood that kept him in existence. With these wolf men and women he created his own pack; a symbiotic relationship in which he traded his own blood for the information and duties the wolves could give him in the daylight.

If one thing kept him from being wholly powerful, it was his strict inability to walk in the sun. Hours were spent by Korun fantasizing about the reach he could have if only the sunlight were not a fatal catastrophe; he could double his power, perhaps even triple it. 

Together with the wolves the vampire traveled from wealthy royalty to even wealthier royalty. He took money, jewels, furs. He took art, weapons, dinnerware; anything of potential value. Then he upgraded to taking their sons and daughters, their lives, and their crowns.

Most of it he kept for himself, hidden away in a cluttered nest worth its weight in the gold that filled it. Some of it he sold for more money, and broken or unwanted pieces he gifted to the wolves thinking himself very generous.

A lifestyle like this one only naturally attracted intrigue and danger. Others like him offered their own services, but Korun could hardly stand anyone sharing his credit. Everything he had created, he created on his own; a method to his madness.

Then there was the savage.

He still remembered the first night he saw the filthy Gaul. Godric was everything Russell hated in vampires: he was more an animal than a creature on two legs, he didn't give a damn about his own hygiene, and he snuck about like a impish child.

The only redeeming quality Korun could ever find in the boy was his thirst for blood and violence; he had even killed one of Korun’s own wolves just to see what would happen. 

This had been four centuries ago, when Godric grunted and growled more than spoke, barely clothed himself, and picked at his teeth with bones.

Something inexplicable possessed Korun; something like pity, and he allowed the younger vampire to trail after him always at a distance. He rarely showed himself, but Korun knew the little beast was never far behind.

It was clear that Godric had been alone for the majority of his life now, but a change in him did occur. Eventually he began bathing and dressing more proper; he even spoke decently. 

Enter the Viking.

The family was only another crown to be stolen, another royal neck to bite, but the Gaul made an even bigger mess than Korun ever had.

He went and turned the Viking prince; filled his tall frame with his own savage blood.

That was the night Korun fled far and fast. They wouldn't see each other again for another century and a half when the dust of running settled.

How sure of it they had been that they would not cross paths so tightly; that Godric would not sit upon the top of the hierarchy in the western woods while Korun controlled a kingdom of his very own creation.

Still the birds came to him on wings of midnight, and the wolf people kept him duly informed. In fact, he would have never known about the Princess of Castamere had it not been for the watchful eyes of his halflings. That girl would be the best and worst gift he could ever give the savage. At best she would only buy Godric some time against the Southern vamps who threatened him, but at worst she would be his downfall entirely.

The way Korun saw it, Aurelia was worth the blood he had spilled to get her; his own being entirely more important than her people’s. If he had to make a progeny, then let it be one that would forever keep Godric of Gaul in chains.

Now the little brute had both his own progeny and Korun’s to weigh him down; he was too righteous to cast them both away. What did a slave know of honor? Any integrity the boy had was laughable. He clung to the hope that he could change and forget his many past discrepancies; that he could tear himself away from the monster his maker had created.

People couldn’t change; Korun was a firm believer in that. 

Any attempts the ancient youth made towards progress were met with laughter by Korun. “You will never escape your chains, so why try?” It was something he had told him in the past; likely the last time he had visited Ghostwoods. Godric hadn’t said anything to the contrary.

On a throne of bones sat the raven man. He did not have a large following; he was incredibly picky about those whom he allowed sanctuary within his nest. To those who shared a like mind, the ways of the sanguinists, and a taste for only the finest things there was no better a place than under Korun’s wing. He may have been a creature most despicable but Korun had been training his entire existence to be a ruler.

Those who followed him did so loyally; they would carry out his commands without question, which was exactly what Korun desired. No one on earth could be his equal.

A glass chalice filled with dark liquid was placed into his decorated hand. The bald vampire stood to his right; something like a guard, and a servant, and an adviser all at once. He was called Oriq, a man of no more than forty and five at death; not so much different than Korun. However, Oriq only carried six-hundred years compared to Korun’s two-thousand-plus. He was the most akin to the nest master of all of them, and perhaps even the closest thing to a friend he would have.

In life he had in fact served royalty; Korun’s most favorite quality about the man. He was quick-witted and sharp-tongued, and beneath his robes he bore impressive musculature. In all aspects he was the perfect second-hand man.

Even more so, he stayed mostly quiet unless addressed: “Oriq, where did this come from?” Korun swirled the blood around in his cup. The broad face turned dutifully. “The blond boy, Master. The Warlord’s son.”  
“Ah, yes.” The glass touched Korun’s thin lips as he pulled the blood into his mouth.

No raven drank the blood of bastards, the weak, or the poor. 

He remembered fondly every royal man, woman, and child he had fed from; their power and influence becoming his with every swallow.

Let them throw insults at him. King of Bird Shit he would be to them no longer, not after he forged his last and most important alliance. They would all see then, those traitors, what a real king was.

“After tonight kill the boy,” he instructed. Oriq nodded wordlessly. It was no use drinking from him again; any power he had would already be drank up in this one glass. Korun smiled to himself and took another luxurious sip.

The raven on his shoulder cried “boy, boy, boy!” and Korun patted its head. It hopped away and flew into the rafters where the unkindness squalled and flapped about like a moving sea of blackness.

Outside of the nest the fall air was unseasonably cold. Carrying his chalice while being flagged by two or three birds, Korun ventured to the other side of the broken shed. The screams had been muffled from the prisoners inside; the food inside. This was where the nest’s victims were taken to await their turn to sustain the superior race they were born to serve. 

Korun wasn’t interested in any more torture tonight; he swirled by in a blur of black and feathers. 

Away from any noise was where he found himself. He drained the remainder of his cup and discarded it with a shatter; priceless chalices were as disposable to Korun as were human bodies.

His eyes focused on the darkness ahead, that vast grass sea of nothing and everything that the raven man could make of it in the future. This could all be his, he fantasized. 

“You will never be happy, Korun.”

The deep, ominous voice came from behind him. Spinning around gave a face to the voice; or rather, a masked face.

The Night Man.

Korun’s mouth curled into a smile that would shame even the devil himself.  
“I’ve been waiting for you.” He told it.

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“I’ve been waiting for you to come around.” Eric traced a finger over the girl’s bare back. She peered at him with brown doe eyes, a woman’s coy smile on her face. “And I wasn’t going to, but it is hard to resist a prince.”

Eric chuckled and the girl ran her fingers through his golden strands. He knew that Hatch had an adoration for him that extended beyond the bedroom, but he had never done anything to stop her.

He had never loved, not truly. Eric the Northman had sacrificed his family’s traditions in order to remain a single man; and in the end he had also sacrificed his family’s lives.

In the beginning he had carried so much guilt inside of him, convincing himself that he was the cause of his father’s murder, his mother’s, and his baby sister’s. If he had just listened to them perhaps things would have gone differently.

But Eric was as stubborn as an ox; he had always believed that he knew what was best, and being the heir to his father’s throne had not helped deflate his ego.

With a sword at his side, a fight in his heart, and a woman always waiting Eric the Viking stamped through his world on the very top; never imagining he could fall, never predicting that his life would end so quickly.

It had been the enemy steel that had done it, the fatal puncture to his side; he would bleed out and ascend to Valhalla to be with his fader and moder once again. Finally his luck had run dry.

And Death descended upon him instead.

In that night he had gained not only a second chance at life, but a father, a brother, and a son as well.

The Boy Called Death.

Godric had done well on his promise to make Eric his companion; the Viking followed wherever the boy went, and in return he taught Eric everything he knew.

Perhaps it was true that Eric had never loved, but the admiration he felt for Godric had to be something close.

Four hundred years later and he had found himself a prince once more.

Hatch rolled onto her side and stood from the bed. Eric watched her wrap her thin frame in a sheet and go to the window. This was the part where he was supposed to ask her what was plaguing her mind, to get to know her, and to show that he cared.

All he wanted to do was fuck, but even undead women were tricky.

For all it was worth, Eric had never once wished he had been born a woman.

“What happened to coming around? I thought that we were making nice progress.” Eric spoke to her back. Hatch peered over her small shoulder, a sad smile on her face.

“I am leaving, Eric. After the warden’s wedding.” 

Perplexion fixed Eric’s features. “What do you mean you’re leaving, where will you go?” _Where could you possibly go?_ To him, at least for now, Ghostwoods was home; going elsewhere just didn’t seem to make any sense.

Suddenly he began to think that it was because of him and their rocky relationship. “Don’t go on my account.”

“I’m not.” She held her shoulders together as if she would unravel at any moment. “I swear I’m not,” she added after looking at Eric’s face.

“It doesn’t matter where I am going, it just... won’t be here.”

And she would not tell him anyway, that much Eric could see. 

“Then don’t think about it now. Just come back to bed. I want to make the most of our last nights together.” He lifted the sheet and Hatch pranced back with a smile on her face.

It was definitely not love, and it may have not been healthy, but it seemed that wherever Prince Eric would go there would always be women.

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Neva had assured him that their victim would have no memory of the scene, but Godric had not been able to face Aurelia since the ‘tea’ incident. 

Not only did he feel immensely guilty for violating her privacy, but now he had important information that Korun had conveniently failed to pass along to him: Aurelia had been pregnant at the time of her death.

Was that meant to be a disgusting jape at Godric’s expense?

He wanted to believe that not even Korun knew about the darkest hours of his past.

The monstrous things he had done as a feral animal were kept locked away beneath the layers of consciousness he had learned for himself. Those new voices of reason were always reassuring him that he could not hold himself at fault for those things; that he had been under the influence of his base instincts. And yet, that never seemed to matter to the Godric who existed now.

For it was still the same two hands that had taken those children, much too young to understand, from their beds and led them to slaughter.

It was a well-known fact among blood drinkers that young blood was the sweetest in existence, and it was not at all unusual for the ancients to have partaken. Only, Godric had made a sport of it as much as he had all the other crimes he had committed. 

Korun would allow him to walk the earth knowing that the woman he wed had lost a child because of him.

His hands would never be clean.

_And you will always be a slave._

In daylight rest he dreamt of a house raging with fire. A girl was trapped inside screaming for help but none came. The more she screamed the larger the flames around her seemed to grow. Godric tried calling out to her to stop but she did not hear.

When he woke he knew that his visions had returned to him.

Eric came that night unsurprisingly. The silence of the truth potion lingered between them but neither wished to bring it up. Sometimes they sat like this anyway, enjoying the company.

“Hunt with me,” Eric insisted. It was a tempting offer just to give his mind a break but Godric shook his head. “I am not hungry.” And he tried to no longer hunt for sport. Eric put his boots on the table, a habit that he knew Godric detested. The Viking was smirking, his eyes daring his maker to say something.

“Child.” Godric swatted Eric’s boots from the table with one fluid motion. Eric only laughed. His laugh was so handsomely lyrical it was difficult to remain cross with him. Eric could stab you through the gut but hearing him laugh about it would make you forget that your innards had spilled to the ground.

“You smell like a woman; do you no longer bathe?” Now Godric tried his hand against his progeny. Eric sniffed at his own clothing and shrugged. “I lay with women, what do you want me to tell you?” That was something Eric would never be apologetic about.

“Maybe if you also had a woman’s smell on you then you wouldn’t notice so much,” Eric suggested. Godric turned away towards the shadows but Eric would not let him escape. “She is beautiful and yours... Or are you saving yourself for marriage?” His foot kicked Godric’s under the table. Eric would know better than anyone besides Godric how false that was; the boy maintained a sex life as befit his biological age. 

“I don’t know her.” But that was a horribly weak excuse; Godric had almost exclusively bedded individuals he did not know. “I mean that it is different in these circumstances.” That he was bound to get to know her, and perhaps that would spoil the whole experience; perhaps he was no good at being with someone he knew too well. Eric was proof enough of that; the two had the ability to go for the throat when provoked.

“She likely has no interest either.” That was a better excuse; a partner with no interest was boring.  
“I have heard much to the contrary according to Hatch.” The shadows that danced across Eric’s face made his grin appear devious.

Godric’s brows gave away his curiosity. “Hatch?”  
Eric nodded. “And Celia. They seem to be teaching the princess things that would be of great interest to a man who wasn’t so powerless.” His northern eyes appraised Godric as the powerless man.  
A grim line made up the warden’s mouth as he stared at his childe.

“I did not ask them to do that.”  
“Well, are you concerned about two experienced lovers teaching your future wife some tricks?”  
“No. I just---- did not expect it.”  
“Maybe now is not the time for expectations.”  
“Remarkably wise for you, Eric.”

Godric folded his arms, a sign that he was done with the conversation. Regardless of whatever the three women were doing or not doing, Godric would not allow Eric to back him into a corner about it.

Now Eric sighed that his fun had come to a swift end. There were so few ways to get the best of Godric; the boy was simply too resolute.

“Will you still be hunting tonight?” Godric peered at Eric from the side of his vision.

“Can I take that with me?” Eric pointed to the scythe standing menacingly in the corner.

“You may not.” As if such a request truly needed an answer.

The two parted ways shortly after; Eric to find someone to eat, and the warden to find peace for his troubled mind.

Hunched in a tree he found himself, picking idly beneath his nails with a sharpened stick. Movement below caught his attention and forced Godric’s eyes downward.

A girl with moonlight in her hair passed beneath his tree, clearly thinking that she was alone. 

The boy had a mind to prove to her otherwise.

He threw down the stick so that it stuck in the ground by her feet. In the time it took her to whip around, he too had leaped from the branch and landed soundlessly.

Aurelia’s eyes widened measurably as she looked from Godric to the sky.

“You’re getting quite fast.” He grinned.

“Which is very slow compared to you.” Aurelia picked up the pointed stick.  
“Trying to impale me before the wedding?” 

The boy’s grin produced a laughing sound. “No, that would be bad luck.”

But that grin quickly fell away when Godric’s eyes were drawn to Aurelia’s middle and the dialogue of what she had told him under the influence of Neva’s potion came back.

Now he was frowning and Aurelia was turning away towards the direction of the river.

“Wait.”

She did.

Aurelia looked at Godric guardedly and expectantly, holding herself together at the elbows as if she would fall apart easily.

He feared that what he wanted to say to her would definitely cause her to do so.

“You asked me if Korun was a demon, and I told you that you could say that of him. I lied: he is a demon without question. He is a demon and so am I.”

The girl brought her unusually dark brows together, brows that did not match her pale hair. She looked disappointed.

Despite her expression Godric continued: “I can be cruel; I can be cruel to you as well, Aurelia Marius. I could be so horrible to you it will make you pray for the true death. I am an unreasonable creature of unreasonable means. If I live in sin I will drag you down with me. My weakness will become your weakness. You are clever so I trust you would have figured this all out in time. Everyone around you is the devil, girl. As soon as you see one evil as lesser than another it will already be too late for you.”

Aurelia did not cry or gasp or flee. Her eyes held on to Godric’s despite her shaking hands. She did not say anything to him, but only grasped the sharp stick and slid it into her sleeve for later.

And Godric grinned.


	5. Sanguinists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Godric teaches Aurelia a lesson, Russell receives some powerful visitors.

When she closed her eyes she saw her home.

The sea lapped the rocky shores like a million sapphires churning endlessly. The sun warmed the strong stones of the castle where inside her husband stroked her pregnant belly and spoke soft words to the child inside.

When she closed her eyes she still felt him inside of her.

The way Max had touched her had always been gentle as if she would easily break. When she laid on her back for him, his lovely dark eyes always told her the love he had for her was endless, and when they had made their son she felt like a goddess.

When she closed her eyes Aurelia Marius imagined that she was not here.

When she closed her eyes she was still the living princess, her beauty was still heralded everywhere, and she was still happy.

In this world of make-believe she imagined that her family was still alive and with her; that her home was not history.

But when she opened her eyes everything turned to black.

She was no longer a princess, and she was no longer a mother-to-be; the only thing she would ever give birth to was hate. The only thing she would ever be a mother to was her raven, the blood she thirsted for, and the dark places she hid in.

Aurelia stood on the shore of the Black Wash. The water bubbled past her like thick ink.

It was near freezing but now so was she.

Her hands went to the laces on the front of her dress; black for the way she mourned. The fabric slipped from her slight shoulders, fell over her breasts, and down her hips until it piled at her feet.

Naked she waded into the river, her hands trailing over the freezing surface. 

She felt nothing at all.

The black water swallowed up her legs and then the place that should have born her son. It rose higher and higher until it completely consumed her.

Tipping her face to the sky Aurelia watched the holes of light wink at her as if they shared her secrets. A woman always had secrets.

A woman was strong, much stronger than her men but she had to allow them to believe that they were the brave ones.

The stars slipped away as the girl drifted down below the surface. Darkness engulfed her, tickled her bare skin. The freezing water embraced her like a lover and quenched the pain from the outside in.

Her eyes opened expecting blackness but instead they saw fire.

A fire underwater was a most unusual thing; impossible really.

Aurelia watched as the flames floated towards her and danced over her skin without burning.

These flames wrapped her body in a powerful feeling that she had not been able to muster up herself; she may have been transformed into a very strong creature but inside she was weak.

But she had lost everything she knew and loved to the fire; it should be her enemy. 

The phenomenon sparkled on her fingertips as if she herself were made of fire, and it did not feel like a foe come to claim her too.

When Aurelia lifted her head from the water the fire was gone and her skin was only wet and not alight with red.

Emerging from the river her mind was no less troubled.

“Enjoy your swim?” A man’s voice asked from the line of the trees.

Aurelia’s eyes landed on the long, lean form of Eric the Northman.

Then she remembered her nudity.

Her arms went to conceal herself quickly out of the modesty she had been bred for; ladies should allow no man to look upon their naked forms aside from their husbands.

Checking the ground for her dress, Aurelia was desperate to find that it was not where she had stripped it off.

Instead it was in the hand of the undead prince.

The female shifted uncomfortably. “Give it back,” she pleaded.

Only, Eric took his long strides to her and was suddenly and unfortunately right by her side. 

As true to the tales, Eric was very handsome. He was one of the tallest men she had ever seen, with hair spun out of gold silk that fell just past his shoulders. His arms and legs were well muscled and he moved them with unnatural grace. It was beyond clear that he had been high-born.

“You know who I am, correct? Eric Northman. You may have heard me referred to as the prince, or the warden’s son, or Godric’s childe... Any of those I will answer to so long as it is nothing offensive.” The way he grinned reminded Aurelia of a large golden cat.

Her tongue began to move of its own accord: “I know who you are,” it formed.  
 _Hatch and Celia have told me all about you, even the most intimate parts._

But she would not meet his eyes, not now; it was much too embarrassing. 

He held the crumpled dress in front of her face. “You lost this, yes?”  
“I did not lose it; you stole it.”  
“You have no proof of that.” Eric laughed.

He reminded Aurelia of a lion; a predatory, golden, smirking lion.

Then this lion roared once more.

“There is no reason for you to be shy; I have already caught a look of all that there is to see.” He granted her with a lecherous look that made her shiver.

“Then there is no reason for you still have my clothes.” Aurelia let her arms fall away from her chest and her eyes meet Eric’s.

This seemed to satisfy him as he returned her woolen gown.

Aurelia was shaking as she pulled it back over her head, feeling violated.

It was hard to think of Eric as Godric’s progeny, despite the vileness that they had in common.

Where the elder was dark, the progeny was light. Godric possessed an air of unattainable wisdom where Eric was much more accessible. The ancientness in the warden’s bones was intimidating but Eric seemed to easily blend in. And Aurelia already knew much of what the women of Ghostwoods thought of Eric, while Godric remained isolated and seemingly untamable.

Besides, she could not shake off the last conversation they had had; the wicked things he had told her.

“Daughter of Korun,” the lion spat at her.

Hurt filled the girl’s eyes.

She was no daughter of Korun’s; her father had been a brave man, a lord who treated his people fairly and fought valiantly. He had passed when she was only twelve but Aurelia remembered him well.

“You have no idea who I am,” she boldly retorted.

“I know that evil blood taints you, that it will rot your heart soon enough and you will become as mad as your maker, and I will not let you destroy my home, or my people, or Godric.”

Aurelia closed her eyes and saw her home burning.

“I just do as I am told,” she whispered into thin air.

But that went past Eric the lion like a leaf on a breeze. He reached out one paw and grabbed a long tangle of her damp hair.

“You are made of black magic; your hair has been kissed by the moon while your lashes remain black as your raven’s wings.”

“It is only a genetic anomaly.” She shook her head.

It was true that when the princess had been born it had been with a full head of dark hair like her mother’s. She couldn’t have been more than five when it fell out in clumps and grew back pale as glass.

Perhaps it was a curse, and perhaps she was made of something dark but Aurelia would not confess such a thing to Eric Northman.

The lion prince shook his mane lazily. “You may have been a princess in life, but in death you will be a queen. In one more cycle of the moon you will be a married woman once more. You will have no duties to fulfill, you will only be worshipped by your people, and you will grow powerful and hungry. They will call you Death’s Queen and fear you as much as they love you.

You should know that you have been given a gift you are not worthy of. You are only here by the word of a man who is too honorable to betray it. I do not trust you, Aurelia Marius, and I have a stake waiting with your name on it.”

The girl stared at the much older vampire knowing that this was no lie.

She nodded her head and said to him, “I have a stake waiting for me too.”

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When he closed his eyes he felt the weight of his chains.

The heavy manacles cut deep into his young skin to form bloody gouges that burned and itched horribly. 

He could tell that they had held prisoners before, that those prisoners had died in these chains, and that he too would die a slave.

When he closed his eyes he saw his home burning.

Gaul had been alive and dead within less time than Godric had been.

When the Romans came everything ended. It was the last time he saw his family, his people. Men of a capable age were rounded up and chained together to be sold at auction; among them were Godric and his brother, Remus.

One by one they were stripped and pushed onto a block like cattle. Many men were not purchased at all, which meant certain death; but what was worse: death or slavery?

It was by some miracle that the brothers were sold as a pair. 

When he closed his eyes Godric remembered the way he stood on that block and watched the buyers appraise him. His chest had heaved with breaths of fury and pain, his muscles taut against his restraints.

It couldn't have gotten worse until it did.

The man who became their master was instantly cruel and had wasted no time in branding them with angry red marks across their shoulder blades.

**SLAVE** was what those brands meant; that they were the property of someone else.

Godric and his brother only existed to serve their Master, and serve him he forced them both to do.

It began immediately, the pattern of which they were made to get used to. The Master tortured them simply for the purpose of torture, and their screams of agony sickeningly aroused him. Which was where the worst of it began.

While other slaves were made for multiple tasks, Godric and Remus’ sole purpose was for the pleasure of their Master. 

He took pleasure in raping them, in whipping them, and hitting them and slicing them with sharp knives; and then he took pleasure in drinking their blood.

It was not at first that the Master revealed his true demon form, but after the young men had been beaten into such oblivion that it almost did not surprise them. 

Of course the Master was a devil, of course he lived on the blood and fear of his slaves, but he claimed to like Godric and Remus most of all. Which was why he turned them too.

After the transition the torture did not stop but was only made worse by the fact that they could not so easily be killed. 

They starved, oh how they starved; the Master withheld the blood they needed to survive to make them as weak as possible and only allowed them to drink from his own vein. It kept them in a perpetual state of imprisonment.

Godric had since tried to put a finger on how many years he had existed this way; the majority of his childhood he had been a sex slave, then he died just as he became a man. He learned to be undead under the guide of the Master-turned-maker, learned how to be just as cruel and sadistic as he.

Only, Godric of Gaul had an intelligence that his Master did not possess.

One night he achieved what little to no vampires ever achieve: he murdered his own maker.

Of course this outraged the undead society in which he had been forced into, and they threatened to destroy him too.

The only regret he found was that he had not been able to rescue his younger brother. 

The boy had become so overwhelmed with sadism that he had begun to turn on Godric. 

When their maker’s head was removed from his body and reduced to ash, Remus threatened to kill Godric too.

It was this way that the vampire was forced into isolation. He never once looked back. _If I look back I will find myself in chains once more._

Yes, he was evil and convoluted and just as abusive as his Master-Maker had been; Godric had no mercy to spare, the way he killed and drank was beyond vile. The way he raped and tore at flesh and bathed in the blood would have made his maker proud.

He had years of revenge to extract and his target was an endless path laid out far into his eternal future.

Often he heard the long-gone voice of his maker warn him, _“beware the God of Death”_ and Godric had lifted his face smeared with gore to the sky and shouted “I do not believe in the God of Death; I am Death!”

But when he opened his eyes he was a king.

He was barefoot and clad only in a pair of thin, dirty trousers and marching up to the great stone door. He didn’t knock, for this was his kingdom and he must remember that he could go anywhere he pleased.

Inside the silver girl shot up like lightning from her chair and the raven screamed.

The look in Aurelia’s eyes was foreboding when she answered his call, as if she had been expecting an intrusion like this to happen at any moment.

Godric stared so coldly at the great flapping bird it froze him in place, and he could only puff out his feathers in indignation while the boy took his girl’s hand and rushed her away.

Deep into the forest he dragged her but she said nothing in protest; this was a good girl. For all she knew he could be leading her to the slaughter.

Finally he spun her around in the fog and the gloom and demanded, “let’s see what the hatchling knows.”

But the girl only stared at him. She searched his face before trying to make sense of the dark markings that decorated his ghostly skin. For the first time Godric noticed that Aurelia did not seem fearful of him but rather angry.

The irritated crease of her brow only served to provoke him further. The warden bowed his face towards hers and said, “run.”

The chase would not be as exciting for Godric as he was endlessly faster than the young vampire. 

Aurelia allowed her feet to catch on raised roots, and her ducks and dives could not outsmart him.

When she attempted to leap into a tree he knew that he had her.

With both hands the boy clutched the girl’s waist and pinned her to the mossy floor with a loud thump. She made a noise like the air was being punched from her young lungs and stared at him wildly.

Twigs and leaves scattered her long, long hair like a crown of thorns, and finally his bride-to-be looked like she belonged to the forest.

“You run like a wounded animal, woman.” Godric hissed.

“Which is meant to be more insulting: a wounded animal or that fact that I am a woman?” 

She probably would have spit on him too if Godric hadn’t tipped his head and grinned impishly. “It is no small feat to be a woman, let alone an insult. The females of our kind have always been much stronger.”

The moon-pale face before him contemplated that. Undoubtedly it was the opposite of what she had been taught as a human; it took time to unlearn the wrongs of human society.

In the meantime Godric watched the lovely face from the most perfect vantage point. Her eyes were rimmed with the darkest lashes he had ever seen despite the stark contrast of her hair; even lighter than Eric’s. How could these two traits exist at once? There were secrets to this woman that he had not considered before.

\--- Like why she chose to hide her body beneath conservative gowns of black and gray when the warden was now finally able to feel the firmness of her underneath his own form.

_She is beautiful and yours._

_That’s right._ A curious seventeen year-old’s hand traveled the slope of her hip and up the winding path of her waist. The muscles beneath were tense and not at all yielding. She only tolerated this attention but the look on her face confirmed to him that she did not desire it.

As he had told Eric: an uninterested lover was boring. So Godric leaned back on his heels and allowed Aurelia to sit up.

A cloud of deep consideration struck her features for a moment. She looked at the boy again to ask, “teach me.”

“Teach you what?” For there was so much she could learn from a monster like him. 

“Everything.” The word fell from her mouth like a lead weight landing right onto Godric’s lap. 

“You don’t know what you’re asking.” 'Everything' dictated the bad with the good, the evil that lay inside every undead creature just waiting for the key to its release. If Aurelia asked so easily for it, the warden was sure to give it to her.

Then again, she had no maker who was worthy of training her, and any lesson Korun would pass down to his progeny would turn to a thick coil around her soul; another chain. Godric could not let another maker use chains.

Aurelia spoke up again, unaware of what he was thinking but determined to pry an agreement from him. “Please. If you teach me how to be a night creature, I will give you whatever you want.” Those thick black lashes lowered so practiced in decorum.

“Now you truly don’t know what you’re asking.” The impish smile returned to the warden’s curved mouth, those gray eyes brewing with yet another storm unbroken. 

“I-- I think that I do,” the girl stammered.  
“No, woman. You want to learn how to feed so carefully you won’t kill, how to leap from the trees like a shadow, how to fly like your wretched bird. Things you have never even dreamed of. You haven’t even killed yet.”

Aurelia blinked. “Stop calling me ‘woman’, I have a name and I’ve heard it on your lips before.”

Godric laughed. There was no sympathy he could show her.

“Come. I will take you to your first lesson.”

The warden led the princess away into the forest, past a frightfully abandoned graveyard. Past fields and stony paths and a stream that fed into the Black Wash beyond.

Fog licked at their ankles and dampened their hair to their brows; this pace seemed slow, too slow for the ancient.

Finally they reached gardens and pastures and the signs of human life.

Two rows of cottages rose up from the earth like crooked teeth, smoke curling from their stone chimneys. 

Aurelia tensed at Godric’s side, and for a moment he thought that she would try to flee; she only looked at him for further instruction.

His eyes landed on a house with a lone individual inside; there she sat in her widow’s robes.

Taking the girl by the wrist he marched her to the door where a cross greeted them menacingly. It was meant to keep evil away, and yet here they were knocking.

The girl stared at the icon as if it would burn her.

It was wooden and could have been used to kill them both if the killer knew as much, but holy relics could do no damage otherwise.

An old woman answered their call, her thin skin lined and sagging. Rheumy eyes evaluated the pair curiously. 

“What are you children doing at such a late hour?” The crone peered beyond them as if expecting to see a guardian accompanying them.

The boy had to prod the girl in the side to get an improvisational story out of her: “forgive us for the intrusion, Madame. My... brother and I were passing through and had some trouble with... our horses. May we trouble you for some water?”

“Well, I suppose so.” The widow leaned on a cane of sturdy wood.

Aurelia made to step past the threshold but Godric grabbed at her gown and hissed, “you must receive an invitation for us.”

“Um, Madame, what exactly are you asking of us?” She almost winced.  
“To come in of course, dearies. It’s a cold night and you’re hardly dressed for the weather.” The old woman looked concerned about the pair’s state of undress; Godric barefoot, and Aurelia wearing only a thin dress.

Godric pushed Aurelia into the heart of the house after the crone who ventured back to check the boiling water in her kettle.

“I was just sanitizing this water meaning to make soup with it, but I suppose you children can have it when it cools.” She lowered herself painfully into her chair.

“Thank-you...” Aurelia was watching the woman, no doubt feeling uneasy.

The warden brushed past her. “First.”  
He leveled his face with the human’s and felt the familiar power of that mental line reaching out to her.

The glamour wrapped its unyielding tentacles around the weak human’s mind until her muscles went slack and her eyes glazed over as if she had just been issued a healthy dose of morphine.

Her cracked, yellow smile reached the vampire as if he were her own child. Then the most soothing voice told her, “you are going to allow us to drink your blood, you are going to die for us. You may feel pain but you will not scream for help.”

His weapons of choice emerged from his gums; two long fangs of gleaming alabaster.

Two twin tears were made on the crone’s thin wrist and the red blood came forth as if it had been waiting for them.

As expected, the youngling rushed the bleeding human.

Godric gave way to the hungry female and he saw her fangs for the first time; identical and perfect they protruded from her mouth.

Without any concern for the integrity of flesh, Aurelia bit down into the wrist and immediately began sucking hard.

Godric heard the blood drain from the widow’s veins like a river rushing south.

When she had tired of the radial pulse the vampire attacked the carotid, ripping through the neck like a wolf attacks a rabbit.

She drank and drank while the warden watched the life slip from her victim; her first. 

Within a minute the woman was dead and Godric was sending a silent prayer to the night lands.

The corpse stared blankly at the ceiling, the undead creature drank it dry and pulled away sated.

Fangs pointed like arrows to the sky and that hair tumbled to the floor like a swirling cape. Aurelia uttered something in a language Godric did not comprehend, but he understood the gist: she was overcome by the blood.

When she turned her face to him everything was white and red. The human blood stained her face from nose to chin and dribbled down her neck and splattered her hair.

Perhaps he should have known what would come next being so experienced, but Godric only sat rooted to his place while the lusting creature crawled towards him.

He remembered clearly how often and naturally feeding and fucking went together, and he had taken his own victims a number of times he could not begin to count.

His ravenous fiancee pulled herself into his lap and smelled his powerful scent, the scent of centuries of bathing in the blood and never regretting it.

This was not the true Aurelia, he knew, but a creature dominated by the bloodlust he had led her into. If she had been in her right mind she would never touch him like this, nor let herself be touched.

She was as guarded as her own castle had been, but even that had fallen to the right kind of evil.

He smelled the wet blood on her mixing with her own scent; it was still so human. 

Godric held her at the small of her back and teased, “you called me your brother, but would a brother ever handle you like this?” And he licked the blood from her chin.

Aurelia moaned softly and hugged her breasts to him. 

“I never had a brother,” she breathed.

“I do not wish to be your brother.” His hand was in her mane of hair.

“I know what you want. It’s the same thing that every man wants.” She did not sound at all cross about it. “You may be old enough to hide it but you are still a man; dead or not. You are not righteous enough to deny that you want me.”

His hand wound around her throat, the thumb finding the spot where her pulse should have been.

_Do it_ , her eyes seemed to beg him.

It would be too easy to remove her head from her neck, just as it had been with his maker.

Age did not matter when it came to destruction, nor did power or strength or sex or beauty.

Aurelia split her lip open on her fangs and spoke through the dripping blood.

“I am to be your queen; this is what everyone keeps telling me.

Your queen of hell, and death, and cold. I am only a symbol, nothing more. I have been stripped of life and stripped of an identity.

Why not take everything, my lord? Why not truly kill me and start over?”

Godric swallowed.

Didn’t it sound so easy when she let it slide past her swollen lips?

His bride could not account for the wrath of Korun, the likelihood of his taking revenge on Ghostwoods and its people, on Godric too.

No, if he destroyed Aurelia it would not be as easy as starting over.

There was more to the story.

So Godric let his hand fall away and his gaze become sorrowful.

“You are to be my queen; what they say is true. Bride of Death suits you too well.

What is not true is your lack of an identity. You are not merely a symbol, Aurelia Marius of Castamere. If I wanted a symbol I would not have made a deal with the devil.”

She had tears of blood in her vivid eyes.

They sat in the dead widow’s house for hours that night.

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He had recalled this man having no face.

Now he did.

“How do you do that?” Korun laughed greedily, for he was already coveting the impossible capabilities of his maker; capabilities that men sold their souls for.

Only, Korun had no soul left to sell.

The Night Man accepted Korun’s envy with a sneer in his direction.

“Don’t be a fool, Korun. I have always been able to change my face.” This face was now brown and rather lovely; the skin of a young Indian boy.

The robes he wore were plain, and he walked barefoot. This disturbed Russell Edgington; a man of this great power ought to present himself as such.

“You only believed that I had no face because it was never constant; it has always been the best way for me hide.” The voice of the boy was even smoother than Korun had remembered.

The raven was concealed in the body of a man; perhaps Korun had found his own way to hide.

“You have always had a weakness for whatever you found aesthetically appealing, Korun. The weight of it made no difference so long as you drenched yourself in gold.”

The nameless man probed his progeny’s sharp face with eyes darker than a cave. 

Korun shivered.

“What a useless sentiment!” He spat smugly. “If my greatest weakness is having good taste then I must be the strongest bastard on this earth!”

But his maker shook his dark head. He knew the doom ahead.

The two men stood off against each other; creator to monster, teacher to student.

When the Night Man spoke again his voice had darkened to a dire tone. “I came not to argue flaws; I came because you have made one of your own.”

Now Korun clasped his jeweled fingers together tightly and peered off at the dark blue horizon. “This is true.”

His maker shifted. “What have you done with it?” As if a monster even worse than Korun had run of the valley.

Korun noticed the uneasiness in this most old and powerful being; he had never seen his maker look less than in complete control.

“I gave her to the Gaul. She’ll afford me power over everything I want.” That included everyone as well.

Like a large cat the Night Man stalked towards Korun until he had him in his claws; and those fingers suddenly were eerily claw-like.

“You created for spite, for wealth. You are greedy, Korun. That is your weakness.” The boy hissed into his creation’s ear.

The raven man laughed quite gleefully. “You do not understand; you never have. You’re too damned old to look beyond the piss-poor ways of you god-humpers. I created for progress, for prosperity! How dare you accuse me of using my own blood for anything otherwise.”

Two pairs of dark eyes locked on each other in a precarious dance. 

Korun knew that his maker was beyond old, perhaps even the oldest thing still in existence, and he could vanquish him without remorse; the two had not shared ties for the majority of Korun’s lifetime now.

“How could you toss away your own blood like a mere plaything? She is of my blood too. Does our kind’s sacred bonds mean nothing to you, _rabe_?”

Korun spat. “You dare to say such a thing to me? What of our bond, _Übel_?” For the Night Man had thought less of Korun than a noble does of the lowliest peasant. And Korun was no lowly man.

The devil who wore the body of a beautiful young man stared threateningly, and Korun knew to expect hell to pay.

“You will bring her to me as punishment for disobeying me and desecrating the traditions of the Holy Sanguinists.” It was a command despite its loss of supernatural effectiveness.

Korun met that order with laughter, such an ugly sound. “You cannot ask that of me. We will settle on a compromise instead.”

The Night Man waited in trepidation. 

“Out of the generosity of my heart and my gratitude for you, _Übel_ , I will give you the lands that your grand-progeny once ruled: Castamere.” What more could an impossibly unnatural beast want--- a charred hole of a once gorgeous place.

The Sanguinists liked those places to hide in, Korun knew. They liked to pray to their godless God in private halls, and flex their boundless faith to something they could not see or hear or taste.

Korun only answered to the blood.

He had never once been capable of considering himself one of them despite the strong way he felt about their kind’s superiority, and their blood.

His problem with the Sanguinists had always kept a discordance between he and they.

They knew him, and they lusted after the incredible power that came with his advanced age--- they knew how valuable it would be to their cause--- but they failed in convincing him.

There was one such Sanguinista, a woman of rather biblical fame, who had almost succeeded in drawing Korun into the cult.

She called herself Salome and she danced the dance of the Seven Veils.

“Castamere.” The Night Man’s smoky voice broke.

“I do not want your discarded toys, Korun. I do not want your city of bones and ash. I want you to do right by your blood.”

Because his maker knew very well that the best tactics to use on Korun were those that made their subject the sole benefactor.

Rings clacked together when the raven vampire sealed his fingers to fists.

“You want me to take back my progeny.”  
“--- Or release her. It is what’s right... But what would have been more right would have been not turning her in the first place when you lack responsibility.”  
“You know nothing of the responsibilities I have.” Korun flapped his arms like giant wings.

“Look around you, old man. Everything here belongs to me; I govern it all.” A sweep of one wing indicated everything in sight.

“And it can be taken away in the blink of an eye.” The brown boy said so as if he planned on as much.

Korun gave him a dark look.

“Regardless, I do not come alone.” 

The Night Man-- who now looked more like a boy-- turned swiftly, his long cloak swirling behind his naked heels.

He disappeared beyond darkness and did not see if his progeny would follow, though he did.

The ravens stirred the wind as they trailed their master and their master’s master.

Hoods, dark hoods made of rich crimson velvet like blood surrounded the Night Man in a half-circle like the crescent moon. 

Korun stopped abruptly sensing familiarity in this small cluster.

“An ambush, _Übel_ \--- It has been how many years and you come with an army?” The raven lord spat venomously.

But a hooded figure broke the circle moving with such grace and purpose.

Korun narrowed his eyes at her before she removed her hood to reveal what would be a beautiful face surrounded by curls of a brown so deep they could nearly be called black.

“Korun, it has been too long now.” Salome intoned in a lush voice. “I could not deny your maker’s invitation to visit you in your own environment.”

The female looked around.

“It is no Castamere but it is nice, my lord.”

Korun sneered.

“Responsibility, Korun, is the backbone of a good man.” His maker said so as if he knew what a good man was.

Yet the lord of Raven’s Peak donned a most charismatic smile and swallowed the bile down into his stomach.

“How could I be anything but honored to treat old friends?” And for a moment even he believed that lie.

But there was no one in sight that Russell Edgington nor Korun could count as a friend.

There remained two more hooded figures, males, whom hadn’t said a single word.

Korun could not allow strangers into his nest; not true strangers, at least.

“Step forward, friends. Don’t be shy,” he coaxed them.  
 _Don’t be fucking cowards._

The two hoods swayed forward and bowed respectfully before showing the faces within.

To the right was a man who appeared to be of an age with Korun, but who possessed numerous less years. He had closely cropped peppery hair and lines around his eyes and mouth. He was rather fatherly looking, but Korun knew that this man had never made any children for there was nothing but space between his legs; the man was a eunuch.

The other was much younger in appearance but older in existence. His hair was styled in a way to force it away from the boyish face until it came into odd spikes at the nape of his neck.

Black lines crawled out from the hem of the boy’s sleeve, and Korun smiled slyly.

_Gaulish bastard._

He was slightly younger than Godric but just as filthy looking. The only thing that stood out about this one was his respect for his elders, the way of the blood, and Korun’s power.

“Remus and Archer, Your Majesty,” Salome purred. “They have been most loyal disciples of the blood for many years now. I trust them.”

Trust. What did their kind know of trust? Korun sneered; he trusted no one.

When he turned to look at his maker again he knew just why.

The Eastern boy with the mop of dark curls was unlike anything Korun had remembered or even seen before. He hated the way his maker could change skins like clothes.

“See us inside, Korun,” the Night Man instructed.

Bathed in firelight this group seemed even more unusual. 

An ancient and legendary faceless creature sat beside a famous murderess beside a eunuch beside the second to last link to Gaul.

And at the head of them all was a man bathed in the shadows of hungry ravens.

They would make a most formidable holy army indeed.

Salome circled the table like a cat hunting for prey; for birds. The large black on Korun’s shoulder puffed its feathers.

The female’s hand made contact with every shoulder she passed in turn.

Remus looked as if he would devour her, and Korun was thinking that he already had a time or twelve.

When Salome reached the Night Man she lingered purposefully. Her dark eyes stared lewdly at the unattainable beast.

Korun sat hunched like a child made to sit in time-out.

“ _Aeternïs_ is growing stronger with each new moon. We can easily overtake Ghostwoods within the next month.”

Aeternïs was what Salome and her peers had dubbed the stronghold of the Sanguinists in the south; it meant _eternal rule_ , and Korun thought that to be exceedingly pretentious.

The raven king laughed.

“What do you intend to do with that pit of sticks and bones, bury it?”

Salome turned on him. “No, My Lord. We mean to take it for ourselves. You do understand how politics work, correct?”

The bird on his shoulder screeched as if it understood the insult.

“Oh I understand, my dear. What you seem to miss is the fact that you will have no supporters to your cause in Ghostwoods; they love their savage king.”

The female’s eyes grew dark and foreboding.

Korun would love to see her try to take him on.

“We do not intend to make friends of the traitors in Ghostwoods, Lord Korun. We intend to enslave them... And as for their savage king, we have reserved a place in hell for him.”

Remus did not inch a muscle as he stared fondly at Salome.

He wanted this, Korun realized; the boy wanted to see his own brother chained once more.

Perhaps he would see it as revenge for what Godric had done to their maker.

“Korun’s progeny is in Ghostwoods currently; we could extract her.” The full lips of the Night Man moved carefully.

Salome nodded slowly. “We could.” But her eyes dug fiery daggers into the nest master.

“He made a deal with Lord Godric; he gave him the girl to wed to seal an alliance.”

_Traitor. Bastard. Devil._

Korun ground his teeth together. The Night Man was betraying him in front of his own eyes and ears.

“You made an alliance with Godric?” Salome looked at him as if he were the traitor now.

He would have to swim backwards now if he didn’t want to drown in this sea. All eyes around the table stared accusingly at him.

“I found a suitable bride for the savage, yes. He was looking for my protection against you, against everyone. I didn’t trust him so I sent one of my own blood. There is nothing sacred about it; it is only a farce. I have no allegiance to Ghostwoods.”

“But you released a lamb into a wolf’s den!” The one called Archer slammed his fist into the table.

Korun and his ravens bristled at the outburst.

Salome intervened. “He means to respectfully inquire as to why you would hand off a newborn to a creature as ancient and cunning as our Lord of Ghostwoods?”

“I have control over her, don’t I?”

“--- And I asked Korun to either take her back or break their bond; it is perverse to put a woman in another man’s bed while having access to her feelings, her thoughts.” The Night Man looked disgusted at his progeny. “I have taught him better.”

“Yes, if you break your bond with the child then we can consider her one of them; you will have no affiliation whatsoever.” Salome looked pleased again.

_My word is sacred._ He had said as much to the Gaul the night he turned Aurelia.

Korun hated lying to himself; he hated being the King of Bird Shit.

No one would take his reign seriously if they could not take his sacred words as such.

What of _his_ power? Why should he allow these fanatics, these Lilith humpers to overshadow him?

He was older, and this was his land. 

Korun had half a mind to banish them for their mere idiocy.

Yet---- he could easily imagine the power these weaklings could afford him.

He would have the alliance of Aeternïs, which was an incredibly powerful nest despite its ludicrous name.

Instead of moving in on Ghostwoods slowly he could take it with a force that would leave those abominations inhabiting it with their fangs splitting. 

And how he would rejoice to see the Gaul put in chains, demolished to the nothingness that he deserved.

Korun’s lips curled.

“No affiliation whatsoever,” he repeated. “I like the sound of that.  
But it would do you all well to remember that I am the one with the den of wolves."

The other vampires smiled.

Even his maker looked slightly pleased.

Salome perched on the edge of the table beside Korun, grinning at him as a friend might.

“Plans should be arranged quickly then; we have a wedding to attend.”


End file.
